


Today The Sun's On Us

by Hawkgay



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Frigga (Marvel) Lives, Graphic descriptions of gore, I took a hammer and fixed the canon, M/M, Memory Loss, Mortal Loki, Non-binary Loki, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Past Torture, Plus Frigga Doesn't Die Because Fuck It, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Shapeshifter Loki (Marvel), Tattooist Loki, Which Is To Say I Gave Loki The Equivalent Of A Blanket And Time Away From Their Toxic Home, Wildly Shifting Pronouns, oc child - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-07-25 17:36:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16202363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkgay/pseuds/Hawkgay
Summary: Loki makes a mistake, one he cant undo. After Thor dies, when the Hulk cage crashes to earth, the only chance of correcting fate is to barter for his brother’s life with the Norn’s at the bottom of Yggdrasil’s roots. They offer him a deal; in exchange for his memories they'll resurrect Thor. Loki accepts- unknowing of the emptiness awaiting him in his reincarnation on Midgard without his dear brother and the life growing inside him.In the Aftermath of the Battle of New York Loki wakes up in a hospital in Hell’s kitchen with no memory of the last month and a whole new past implanted in their mind. Setting up a Tattoo parlour in the city they nearly destroyed, Loki learns to move beyond the trauma that used to define their life. Becoming someone outside of only being Thor’s brother and Odin’s second son.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the first ever Thorki Big Bang, Beta'd by the wonderful [wouldyouknowmore](http://wouldyouknowmore.tumblr.com/) and art by the awesome [happinessfordeeppeople](http://happinessfordeeppeople.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I plan to update this once a day for the next week to space out the chapters a little
> 
> Title comes from the song Today the Sun's on us by Sophie Ellis-Bextor
> 
> Playlist of the music to go with this is [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/0pbljhbnlvrttosxkeyt3h91h/playlist/3xmO5rUQ2JXY1cQB7HIwmR?si=ymncxsseQ1uXjBl3Cvtk9A). I advise to just press shuffle and listen to whatever comes up because the songs are in no real order
> 
> also if you do comment can you not misgender Loki? I used mostly they/them pronouns and sometimes he but like yeah in this they/them is the correct ones

Fate is a fickle thing, wild and untameable, it never bows to the will of men or Gods. Many tried only to have their life cut short with the snip of a pair of scissors. Sometimes events are set in stone while others can change by one simple misstep, like stolen time between two lovers before they’re torn away from each other, or the misjudgment on ability and the height of a fall. Thor found himself in the latter category as blood pooled into his limbs and he dropped Mjølnir, and pinned to the side of the glass Hulk cage by centrifugal force, Thor lost consciousness. The cage hurtled to the ground and shattered into a million pieces of glass and metal, the impact causing a sizable crater into the ground. Mortals think Gods are these infallible, unkillable behemoths when really, like everyone else, they live and die. Good deaths for them are generally either surrounded by family as they drift off to sleep or dying in well fought battle with the adrenaline filled blood still pumping in their veins. Thor’s death was a bad end for a good soul. Large chunks of blood splattered glass and blocks of metal were littered on and around Thor who laid impaled on a large, twisted steel beam. Ignoring the obvious injury, his body was grotesquely out of shape, his arms and legs bent at unnatural angles and black from bruising. No longer the God of Thunder, Thor looked like a parody of his former self, a rag doll twisted and broken. Standing at the sidelines Loki surveyed the chaos he wrought. None of this had been what he wanted, not the destruction of the Bifrost, not the invasion, not _this_. All Loki ever hoped was that these calls for help would be answered, to have someone see past the act and realize Loki only wanted to be given love and acknowledgement like Thor received freely.

 

Treading a path carefully, Loki made his way to the epicentre of the devastation, glass crunching underfoot as he walked. Stopping as he finally came to Thor’s prone form. Kneeling down Loki placed his hands on his brother’s face and brought his forehead down to rest on Thor’s.

“Fool,” he muttered under his breath, “you were meant to survive this.”

 

Loki could feel is heart begin to split in two; a wolf could not live without his deer to hunt. Their lives a counterpoint to each other, the sun and moon, the darkness and light, a trickster god and his unwaveringly good brother. Both of them in an unwinnable war for all of eternity. Loki was broken out of his internal lament as Thor took a sickening rattle of breath in. Blood seeped thickly out of the abdomen wound onto the ground while Thor tried and failed to grasp Loki’s face, his fingers finding only empty air. A shade spelled into existence while his brother continued his scheme, unable to do anything except watch in despair and horror. More blood gushed out as Thor struggled to move; a trickle of it ran down his chin as he attempted to speak. Nothing came out other than an unhealthy gurgling sound, his breath failing to respirate around the liquid in his lungs. Loki did everything he could to try and help Thor, but without being there physically, his magic was useless. A cheap trick to tease his brother as he lay consumed by pain and close to death. For the first time since he learnt his magic, Loki felt as useless as a child and as helpless as one. A child who made a mistake not even his mother would be able to fix. No one could.

 

In Asgard talk of the Norns was common if not hushed, from stories for children to old women who warned to never insult them. Justices of mortals and gods alike, seers of fate who oversaw the universe from the well at the bottom of Yggdrasil’s roots. They watched empires rise and fall while never interfering with the fabric of fate. Loki had heard rumours of people who had managed to alter their destiny with use of a spell that stopped the boughs of Yggdrasil from swaying and visited the three oldest Norns. Loki, in the folly of youth, had sought out to find how to cast the enchantment, researching deep in Asgard’s archives, and had even located old sorcerers living in the outskirts of the kingdom. He had never found anything other than faded text in ancient tomes and cryptic warnings from powerful magicians to not mess with what he could not comprehend. Abandoning the study after a desolate winter, the stories were never far from his mind. Loki in his immaturity couldn’t grasp old magic, differing dramatically to the art practised by Asgard. Untamed pure magic ran free and to control it, it needed the conviction of the caster and blood. Fantastical things happened when the two met; the birth of the world tree and the creation of the realms were one. The other was changing fate and the universe with it.

 

The spell Loki spent his time looking for needed only two ingredients. A simple enchantment needing tears of true remorse and the blood of a wrongful death. Both mixed together created a powerful charm. As the light slowly drained out of Thor’s eyes, he mouthed Loki’s name one last time as his body went limp. For the first time in years, Loki cried and not the weeping of a prince who didn’t get his way or the whines of a child terrified of their parent. His projection sobbed inconsolably on Thor’s chest while the real Loki only let one single tear fall down his cheek. Despite the distance, the moment the last drop of blood left Thor’s body and the solitary teardrop landed on the floor, the world slowed. The birds stopped singing their songs, people froze as they went about their tasks and Yggdrasil stopped its swaying.

 

 ***

 

Down past the trunk of the world tree and far past most of its roots existed the well that fed and watered it. Set deep in the middle of a rocky plateau, golden energy flowed upwards and into the atmosphere, vanishing as it went. The stars surrounding it started to move, and three humanoid figures leaned over the well while tendrils of stars began gathering the light in thin glowing strands. Carefully they passed the threads to each other as they wove the gold into a cloth as their duty required. The Norns, older than the universe and makers of fate, created an intricate pattern on the fabric of the universe, each string a life, a death, a war or any other possible occurrence. A future they saw as they gazed deep within the well as they wove, the finished parts floating into the aether before taking home in the great roots of the world tree. Stopping only when the golden energy froze in place and looking up, the Norns noticed the branches of Yggdrasil had ceased as with the rest of the universe. Over the millennia the three had stood as their duty required to decide the destinies of the inhabitants within the Nine Realms, and throughout it they could count a mere handful of times they’d been called. In unison the Norns searched within the well for the person who’d summoned an audience with them, finding the culprit quickly.

 

The God of Mischief was not who they were expecting, a strange god whose life had been nothing but defying fate. A foundling born in the middle of a war and left to freeze to death in an abandoned temple on Jotunheim. Discovered by the Allfather who took pity on the babe and took him home, raising the child as his own to be either a king of a place that did not want him or a tool to be used against his homeworld. A child nurtured on pain, lies and deceit until he wore it as armor and wielded it like weapons. It all culminating in Loki trying to impress his indifferent father and ending up falling into an endless abyss, rejecting everything he was made to be in the act. The Norns had watched him drift through the void, noting the small spark of light still in his heart. Holding onto the love for the two people who’d loved him for who he was, using it as a life raft until Loki fell out of the Norns’ sight. Coming back several years later filled with poisonous hate, tainting his mind to the point he’d become an instrument in death to the one person Loki had promised to never hurt.

 

Urðr, the largest and wisest of the Norns, plucked a static Loki from the blood soaked and devastated field and carried him through the cosmos, placing him in an empty spot of the rocky platform. Loki unfroze a moment later and panicked at the sight of the ocean of stars and meteors orbiting the plateau, something he’d been well acquainted with in his imprisonment. Distressed at being returned to Sanctuary, Loki curled into a ball on the ground, waiting for when Thanos would order his herald to send him back to be tortured. The last two years were not kind to Loki, when he landed at the feet of the Mad Titan he was at the mercy of his whims. The first few months they’d locked Loki in a cage where he could only stand, and food and drink were withheld from him until delirium set in. Then the real torture began: day after day illusions of his family came to Loki. Sometimes they would just stare at him as he desperately begged Thor or his mother to save him, other times Odin came close enough to the cell for Loki to smell his rancid breath as he repeated every single hurtful word he’d ever told Loki. Soon enough the chant of _failure, mistake, unworthy, heartless_ and a multitude of other defects Odin used to belittle him became the lullaby Loki fell asleep to. He couldn't remember when Frigga and Thor joined in on the nightly torment; time had started to blur for Loki as starvation fed into his delusions. All strength to bear it, to protect Thor and his mother, faded away while the poisonous beliefs that they never loved him replaced them. Loki broke not long afterwards, his mind and body unable to take it anymore. Released from the cell, he bent the knee to Thanos, and in turn the Titan moulded his fragile mind to believe he was owed reparations in the shape of Earth, and in return he just needed to retrieve the Tesseract.

 

Armed with the spear and an army, Thanos pointed Loki at Midgard, and Loki went gladly. Trapped so far in the throes of insanity, Loki revelled in the wreckage he rained down on the pitiful mortals, faltering only when Thor stole him away from the insufferable heroes of Earth and flew the two of them to an isolated forest. Loki’s well kept emotional barriers were cracked by Thor’s impassioned speech on how much he missed Loki; he did not care that Asgard had not mourned him, but the news of the impact his loss had on Frigga and his brother broke through. When the man of iron and Captain America interrupted them, some of the madness returned to Loki though a small part inside his mind wanted to ask Thor for help. Instead he stayed silent and let his plan unfurl.

 

Now he wished above all else he’d reached out; the memory of his brother struggling to say Loki’s name one last time was still fresh in his mind. He knew the image would haunt him for the remainder of his life. He failed his brother in his greatest need, and it killed Loki to know he could’ve saved Thor if only he’d been less prideful.

 

Far too absorbed in his regret, Loki did not notice when the stars themselves began to move until three gargantuan humanoid figures loomed above him. Only vaguely woman shaped, the Norns were crafted like their weavings from the universe itself, each one containing the nine realms they watched over within their bodies. Urðr, the oldest, was distinguishable by the black holes where her eyes would be, Verðandi, the middle Norn’s eyes held the explosive gleam of a supernova and Skuld, the youngest, saw the universe through the blinding light of newborn white stars. The three of them observed the tiny god in their presence before Urðr spoke.

 

“Why did you call for a meeting with us, young one?” Urðr's incomprehensible voice sounded like a trillion rotten branches snapping at once. Loki looked up in dread for the source of the frightening noise, coming face to face with a being of immense power that struck him speechless. Realizing instantly he was in the company of things he would never be able to understand. Sensing the power they held could squish him like an ant under their feet, Loki, unnerved, tried to escape. Scrabbling backwards, the rough hunks of rock littering the stone platform scraped the skin off Loki’s hands. As he neared the edge, a tendril of smoke like stars grabbed him before he fell.

“Be careful, small god.  You do not want to fall again. The universe is rarely merciful twice,” Verðandi warned Loki. Her tone was reminiscent of Frigga’s chiding when he’d been a young child. She held him for a moment to straighten his clothes out before setting him down gently, finishing her contact by pushing his hair out of his eyes and patting his head.

Lastly Skuld spoke, her voice a morning chorus of birds all singing at the same time, “Since you are the one who asked for an audience with us, it’s our obligation to grant you a boon. What will you have us do, dear wanderer?” She brought her face close to Loki’s, blocking his view of everything except the constellations inside her. Awe-inspiring in her beauty Skuld smiled at him with a mouth made of planets.

 

Loki suddenly understood where he was and the identity of the beings before him. Somehow he’d cast the spell that eluded him for so many years, and now he’d been taken to the well at the bottom of Yggdrasil. The history books and stories never warned Loki how strange and different the Norns were from the Aesir or other races. Loki bowed low in politeness to the figures he’d always longed to meet; they were his only hope to undo the wrong he caused.

 

“Oh great Norns, I’ve come to correct a grave error in fate. My brother Thor died well before his time, and I seek to fix it.  Please lend me your aid.” Loki had never pleaded to anyone except his mother, but Thor’s life laid in the hands of the Norns. Willing to pay any price including cutting his own heart out, Loki waited with bated breath for the three ancients to respond.

The trio of eldritch beings slowly revolved around the plateau and began to eerily speak in unison, “A life must pay for a life, Loki Laufeyson. Odinson's spirit is already on its way to Valhalla, and to rob the hall of such a noble warrior is against the natural order. Tell us how you expect to fulfil this debt.”

“Take my life. I do not deserve to live with blood on my hands and the world missing an integral piece.”

Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld stopped moving and huddled over Loki, gazing deep within the golden light of fate’s well. Silently reading it, they ignored the inconsequential god until they turned to him and told him the results.

“The future needs you, Laufeyson, and it also needs Odinson. There are other things you can sacrifice that are worth a life. It’s up to you what you are willing to offer in exchange to resurrect Odinson's life.”

 

Loki interrogated himself on what they could mean by something worth just as much as a life. The Norns wouldn’t have mentioned the option if there wasn’t an answer. Life had so many different meanings, from the literal meaning to a child’s birth and even the stories that kept people alive in the collective memory of Asgard. Then it dawned on Loki: memories were a person’s life. Without them whatever encompassed a person vanished, becoming a blank slate to start anew. Loki felt apprehensive; giving them up might mean he would never see Thor again. Was it better for the universe to regain Thor or for Loki to be selfish and keep his brother’s memory to himself? Loki already knew the answer.  Smiling, Loki told them his solution, “Take my memories in trade for Thor to survive the fall, and I shall not mind at being at your mercy. That is my offer.”

“A good arrangement. We accept. This does mean the end of Loki Laufeyson for a while. Are you ready to be reborn, sweet snowflake?”

 

Before Loki could reply, Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld frowned as many tendrils of smoke like stars left their body and started to swirl around him. Trapped in a sphere of pure darkness, Loki felt a fire ignite inside his abdomen and begin to spread out, quickly overtaking his form with a golden light which glowed as bright as the stars in the sky above. His senses deadened one by one until the only thing remaining was the pain of burning. Finally it became too much for Loki to handle, and he fell into nothingness while the Norns readied to reform him into something entirely new.

 

 

Art by [happinessfordeeppeople](http://happinessfordeeppeople.tumblr.com/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Thorki tumblr is [Mother-Of-Mischief](https://mother-of-mischief.tumblr.com/) come scream at me there.
> 
> This fic will update daily until all the chapters are up


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is where the tag for graphic descriptions of gore come in because my brain had to make it tragically beautiful.

And the universe returned to movement. The realms continued their ancient delicate dance around Yggdrasil, and the inhabitants of each world unfroze and went back to their lives unknowing of the change. On Earth the grass rustled in the wind, and fire still burned at the impact site of the Hulk cage. Thor did not die a lonely, cruel death, regretfully caused by his brother’s hands far away from his home and the people he cared for. Instead Thor awoke inside an overgrown thicket of brambles several metres away covered in scratches but otherwise intact, oblivious to the fact he’d missed death by a hair's breadth. Pulling himself out of the brambles, Thor surveyed the wreckage he narrowly escaped from; he wouldn’t know for a long time that the person who loved him most stopped the cosmos to change fate and resurrect him. Thor called for Mjølnir and thrust it into the air, and a bolt of lightning and magic struck him. Letting the tingle of electricity flow through him, Thor’s armor began to assemble around him, readying him for the battle to come. Once completed Thor grasped the hammer’s strap and started to spin it faster and faster, finally allowing it to pull him off towards New York.

 

Arriving in the nick of time, Thor helped his new comrades fight the Chitauri hoard. Swing after swing, Thor would take out one of the enemies just to have another one replace it. The Avengers were not faring well as the battle ran on longer, and unable to pause and rest, Thor could see the toll it took on their mortal bodies. Thor looked for Loki in the mayhem, hoping his brother was not beyond reason. Instinct told him something had been off in Loki’s eyes on the roof of Stark tower earlier; his actions were in line with wanting to take over Earth, yet his eyes silently begged Thor to stop him. Unable to locate Loki, Thor watched as Iron Man guided the nuclear missile into the portal above, the battlefield going silent as everyone waited for him to come back. When it seemed he wouldn’t be returning, Black Widow closed the portal, but just as it nearly shut fully, everyone saw a dot fall through as the Chitauri collapsed in unison. Only when the conflict was over did the Avengers notice the absence of the instigator. The team split up into small groups of two to comb the area before Loki escaped, spending over an hour searching the rubble until Captain America and Hawkeye found the God of Mischief--well, the former god.

 

Near the bottom of Stark tower, Loki laid on top of a pile of bricks, impaled gruesomely on a metal girder. Obviously he had died somewhere between the start of the battle and its end. The blood staining the metal was already drying and flaking off. The pale white skin Thor always loved about Loki was sluggishly changing colour into a dark translucent blue. His empty green eyes stared at the Avengers as if to accuse them of causing his death before they to shifted hue, becoming crimson as the blood on the ground and Thor’s cape. Thor alone was the one to go to Loki, dropping Mjølnir with a thunk on the ground behind him. Caressing his face, Thor rested his forehead against his before lifting Loki off the beam, intestines and gore fell out the puncture wound in his gut. Tarnishing Thor’s armor and hands a deep gritty red, he held Loki, ignoring the Avengers staring at the scene in disgust and the sounds of Tony gagging at the rank smell and viscera staining Thor’s cape. There would be no merriment from him after this fight; he’d saved Midgard at the cost of his brother’s life. He no longer cared about what the others thought as he kissed Loki’s forehead and mourned their twisted and broken relationship. If he hadn’t been so blind to Loki’s inner conflict over the last several hundred years, maybe he could’ve prevented this. When the Allmother told Thor Loki still lived, he’d breathed a sigh of relief, happy at the thought of Loki returning home to him and the hope of reconciliation. Those dreams were now dashed and dead as his brother.

 

Gently stroking Loki’s hair, Thor sat in shock as chunks of black greasy hair came out in his hand. Then he noticed a pinkish viscous liquid running down Loki’s eyes like tears before the centre of his face began caving in. Thor could only watch on in horror as flesh from the body in his arms sloughed off onto the ground leaving him holding a bundle of bones. They too didn’t stay intact for long before they crumbled into fine white dust which the wind blew far into the blue sky. Frigga had taught both of her sons the signs of where a soul went after it died, Thor knew Loki’s soul did not find peace in Valhalla and actually gone to damnation in Hel. Dark grey storm clouds blocked out the sun as rain pelted down on New York, thunder rattled and lightning flashed as Thor let the storm inside him swirl out of control in grief. Loki was dead again, and this time it was final.

 

Knowing the tempest slipped far out of his control as his inner turmoil took over, Thor called Mjølnir. Turning on his allies he readied his hammer to fly away, distantly feeling one of them trying to hold him back and speak calming words. Beyond caring about the mortals’ sympathy, Thor flew to the top of Stark tower and the Tesseract. Ripping it harshly out of the housing Selvig had constructed, he refused to care about the world he’d just saved. They were partially responsible for Loki’s death, though deep down he understood the true culprit was whoever Loki had spent the last two years with. Activating the cube in a flash of blue light seen from miles around, Thor returned to Asgard covered in the last remnants of the person he failed.

 

***

 

On Asgard the atmosphere in the throne room was thick enough to cut with a knife. Odin sat on his throne while Frigga had settled on the steps leading up to it, both waiting in heavy silence for the return of Thor, punctuated regularly by Heimdall updating them via ravens, both hoping Thor would bring home their wayward second born. Odin had been devising cruel punishments for Loki would face for embarrassing Asgard in the eyes of the other realms while Frigga only wanted to gaze upon to son she thought she’d lost forever. As the hour neared its end, the Allmother left her spot to pace back and forth in the throne room, waiting nervously in expectation for the next raven. She stopped in her tracks when the doors crashed open with an ear shattering bang, and eyes haunted and red, Frigga caught sight of Thor’s blood soaked armor and knew instantly something had happened to Loki. Ignoring her, Thor moved to stand at the bottom of the stairs in front of his father’s throne and tossed the Tesseract unceremoniously before him before stepping back a few steps to scowl at Odin, remaining silent as if to dare him to speak.

 

Odin overlooked his son’s conduct with a sneer.

“Good, you’ve brought the Tesseract to its rightful home. Best it goes in the weapon’s vault where it can’t cause any more harm.”

Odin gestured for the two soldiers who stood sentry by the throne to take the artefact away and for everyone minus his family to leave. Alone he continued on with his inquiries, “Where is your brother? I hope you aren’t trying to protect him. He needs to face punishment for the shame he brought on our family and Asgard.”

“Dead,” Thor bluntly replied to the Allfather, refusing to look him in the eye. Instead he searched for his mother and in silence showed his sympathy with a simple stare, letting the pain in his eyes talk louder than any words. Thor knew the news would break his mother again. Losing Loki once was bad enough, and he’d failed in his promise to return his brother alive to her.

“A shame. He’s caused so much strife on Midgard trying to be a king, and I’d have liked to see him sentenced for it,” Odin spoke casually, indifferent to the news of his second son’s death and actively insensitive to the tears falling down his wife’s cheeks and the barely contained fury within Thor. He curtly changed the subject and said, “Heimdall informed me that you showed great esteem in battle today, a good reason for Asgard to celebrate and lighten everyone’s moods.”

 

Thor lost it. How could his father be so cold towards Loki and not feel a tinge of guilt about his death? They’d been raised as brothers and told over and over to always look out for family. The two of them cut their teeth on Odin’s war stories, listening for hours as their father described in detail the last great uprising of Jotunheim and the frost giants’ defeat at Asgard’s hands, Thor and Loki becoming impatient to grow up and gain their glory on the battlefield with each session. In light of Odin’s recent behaviour, Thor started to analyse those past interactions; in hindsight maybe he’d only seen what he wanted to. He remembered how Loki would vanish into thin air half the time to avoid Odin’s storytelling, and the other half he was forced to sit in silence by the Allfather and listen. Either way, it didn’t matter. Their father would shower attention on Thor and ignore Loki. Praise, affection and gifts were a common thing for Thor to be given, his childhood full of happy moments of fun and love. Hidden in the joy were the memories of abuse hurled at Loki, pain and humility for even minor infractions. Thor recalled telling his brother to try and stop causing trouble. Knowing he helped create Loki’s misery turned his stomach, and Thor decided he’d had enough of it. It was too late to apologise and make things right to Loki, but he could at least try to hold their father accountable.

 

“You don’t care, do you? The gore staining my armor is his, and he died a painful, lonely death. He was just a tool for you to manipulate until he became inconvenient. Too blind to see the way you treated Loki killed him agonizingly slow and caused the actions on Midgard.”

Thor broke down and allowed the anger to flow, barely pausing before continuing his tirade. “All the bloodshed and death are on your hands for not understanding he needed you. I can’t stand idly by and let his death be in vain. I failed Loki, and that will always haunt me so I am going to spend my life trying to make up for it.”

As he finished Thor turned his back on Odin and started to walk away.

 

The throne room doors echoed in the empty hall as Thor slammed them closed behind him, leaving Odin and Frigga alone in uncomfortable silence. The queen of Asgard refused to let the disgust show on her face at the behaviour of her husband towards Loki; it wouldn’t change anything. She was expected to stay silent and be the perfect mother and wife Asgard needed. Even in the aftermath of Thor’s outburst, she remained stoic, knowing her first born in his anger and torment would be impossible to catch or console. Frigga stayed in Odin’s presence, faking agreement with his judgement and making small talk for an hour before leaving under an excuse of a task she had to attend to in her quarters. Head held high, Frigga walked proudly to her chambers, keeping the act up to the guards and courtiers she passed. Her steps only gained speed once she entered the wing where her apartments were located, and she quickly entered the main doors and locked them behind her. Finally safe, Frigga let her mask slip, and a wave of blue energy spread out into the antechamber. The furniture as it was hit exploded into chunks of splintered wood and feathers while books tore apart and littered their contents all over the floor. Nothing remained intact as the Allmother slid onto the floor, and great heaving sobs shook her, the torment inside reflecting the now wrecked room. Frigga had lost her beloved son not just once but twice, and both times she was not able to help him. She had always known Odin would turn on Loki, but she’d tried her best to shield him from the worst of Odin’s rampages and take the brunt of it herself, especially as Loki grew older and showed no aptitude in the Asgardian form of fighting and gained a talent for magic.

 

Loki of course never helped things; he played cruel, mean hearted tricks on the people in the palace and drew Odin’s ire like a moth to a flame. Frigga had taken him then, hoping to temper some of the viciousness out him by showing Loki the beauty of magic. For the Allmother understood him in a way not many could. In her youth she’d been wild and untamed as Loki, allowing her emotions to run free unfettered to cause as much havoc as her son until she learnt self control. It didn’t come easy to her, of course; it took years of practice for Frigga to change into the serene queen Asgard had now. She believed in her heart she could help Loki begin the long journey by teaching him everything she knew, from the simple illusions of colourful butterflies fluttering in this very room to the art of stealth magic. Frigga even allowed him deep within the Archives forbidden and forgotten by most of Asgard, answering every question and giving Loki the love he needed to thrive. Loki opened up to her, and Frigga revelled in the attention, happy to see the carefree child she’d sung and rocked to sleep years prior. They stayed attached at the hip in those odd years of Loki’s adolescence, not quite a child any more yet still far away from becoming an adult. Eventually he started to pull away from her and vanish in the winters, but Frigga, unworried at the change, knew it was natural for a child to create a life independent of their parents. One day he would tell her where he went, and until then, she waited patiently for that day. Then a drastic change came over Loki, returning from his wanderings completely shut off and skittish. After that Frigga could never get him on his own, and he would flee from her sight. It broke her heart to realize Loki was scared of her. Privately she had her suspicions on the reason for the transformation, and, unable to prove it, Frigga left Loki alone. In the present she wished she’d tried harder to reach out to him and help soothe his tortured soul, a regret that would haunt Frigga for the rest of her days.

 

Pulling herself up off the ground, Frigga ignored the chaos around her, picking a path carefully through the mess of splintered wood and other detritus and ending at the door of her workroom. The routine act of weaving called to Frigga to empty her mind of the sins of the past. She entered the windowless room with walls lined by looms of various sizes all vying for space. Every single one held importance to the continued existence of Asgard; they were the threads of potential futures and a way to prepare if the worst should happen. Some of the tapestries had ended prematurely, making it apparent the unlikely nature of that scenario ever coming true. Others trailed long and unwieldy, the pattern complex for all the people who played a part in its creation. Frigga inspected each one, feeling the finished parts to see if a spark would inspire her. Most of them felt dull and lifeless in her current mood, until, ferreting around a dusty corner, Frigga found a tapestry she hadn’t seen in years. The design was one of her favourites, a quiet woodland scene of a deer and wolf drinking from the same river while the sun shone bright overhead. She’d started it the day Loki was put into her arms, and it had stalled the winter Loki disappeared for the last time with a knot Frigga could not untangle. Except now, the knot had vanished like it never existed in the first place, and, studying it closer, she noticed a change in the tapestry itself. To the untrained eye, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but to Frigga the whole thing was off by one millimetre, a shift to the left so neat and professional it almost looked intentional. Frigga was puzzled as to how someone had changed something so intricate without disturbing the rest of the piece. It took a deft hand to edit an already semi-complete work, and only a handful of masters in the Nine Realms could do such a task. Gently she ran her fingers over the newly fixed bottom edge of the tapestry and found herself lost in visions.

 

The first thing Frigga saw in the shadowy domain of her Sight was Thor lying alone speared on something invisible. Broken and bruised, she could tell something heinous had happened to him, his injuries matching that of men thrown a great distance with speed. Out of the darkness a constantly shifting green blur walked past her towards Thor, kneeling as it reached him. Stock-still, Frigga could now see who they were. Haggard, Loki rested his forehead against his brother’s and then broke down, releasing a cascade of tears as he mourned in silence, as all things in this dimension were. The premonition transformed to Loki alone talking to unseen forces, smiling as he gave them an answer. Frigga guessed through context that he’d summoned something powerful and old to fix his mistake. The scene changed once again to Thor standing triumphant and alive with Mjølnir held high in the air, which faded to him cradling a badly decomposed Loki in his arms, stoic in shock as the body finally collapsed into dust. A sign his soul was firmly in Hel, she knew then Loki had gone to the bottom of Yggdrasil and asked the Norns to adjust Thor’s fate, paying the price as of expected of the Norns with his life. A noble demise considering the poisonous madness that had eaten away at his soul and mind. Turning away, Frigga thought it the end of her divination, until a moment later another thing came into sight: on a strange bed made of shiny metal, a feminine figure lay prone under white sheets. Her long black hair covered her face, and breathing evenly, the girl turned over, allowing Frigga to see her fully. It was Loki, though a Loki only her and Thor had seen. Loki took pride in his rare shape shifting ability, flaunting it all over Asgard and tricking his brother with many different forms, but this one had been private, and he had only trusted  his mother and brother with the knowledge. Confused why Frigga was seeing this particular vision, it clicked that maybe Loki hadn’t given away his life. The Norns rarely would ask for a different trade unless both parties were needed in the future, and then they offered something similar enough to count. It meant Loki still lived, and somewhere on Midgard. Frigga smiled widely as her sight dissolved, returning her to her empty workroom.

 

Humming the lullaby she used to sing to her sons, the Allmother lost herself in the rhythmic motion of the shuttle moving to and fro, charting a future more than likely coming to fruition. She found it funny that out of all her projects, the one started out of a pipe dream she had when Loki was put into her arms the first time had been personally changed by the Norns. Fate was such a surprising thing, and Frigga wanted to know more than anything how this story ended. Hours went by, and Frigga grew engrossed in helping the tapestry take further shape, forgetting about the disarray of her chambers next door and at peace with knowing Loki was alive and hopefully happy. Frigga did not hear the door open as Thor quietly snuck in. He watched her work for a while and took comfort in the nostalgic tune of her humming, choosing to cheer her up after today’s upheaval as he’d done as a child. Silently he went to her and sat on the floor by her feet, and leaning against her legs, he placed his head in her lap and followed her deft fingers as she weaved back and forth. Frigga stopped to stare at her cherished first born, his soft expression full of unconditional love. She lightly stroked his hair for a moment than placed a gentle kiss on his forehead, and Thor returned the gesture by holding both of her nimble hands between his and warmed them as he’d done as a child. One day he would learn the truth of Loki’s survival, and until then Frigga vowed to protect her son from self destruction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the scene between Frigga and Thor makes up for the heart wrenching shit I pulled for the sake of angst and drama


	3. Chapter 3

The thunderous crash of war was the first sound Loki heard as his senses slowly returned to him. Beasts roared as they rode into battle while swords clashed against thick hide before their wielders screamed and died, a wretched lullaby Loki wished not to hear. Unknown to him the void of stars engulfing Loki began to move and gradually transform into an ancient temple carved from ice which was steadily being reclaimed by nature. Opening his eyes, Loki watched as snowflakes floated down from the fire tinged sky and landed on his face, and in his bones he understood where he was. On Jotunheim, during the last great uprising Odin used to spend hours telling stories about, before the Casket of Ancient Winters became another stolen relic in Asgard’s vault, and before the planet fell into barbarity. Loki had wondered a lot since the revelation of his true origins what Jotunheim looked like preceding the interference by the Allfather; he always thought he’d hate it, but instead he begrudgingly admitted the beauty this place held. He marvelled at the faded engravings which plastered every wall, most of them of battles long forgotten, though a few showed what appeared to be the coronation of a king. The din outside, as well as Loki’s thoughts, were interrupted  by the unexpected wailing of a baby, and confused, he looked around and tried to locate the source of the noise. Eventually noticing a hidden alcove where most of the sounds came from, a feeling of dread overcame Loki has he debated whether to go over there or not. If there was a chance a child was here, Loki had to check it out. He may have hated everyone and wished them ill, but it had never applied to innocents. His feet dragging along the ground, Loki made his way towards the alcove and watched as the ice below him started to glow a faint white before it joined in with the baby’s squalling by singing. A haunting refrain of a home long lost and a family never known snaked around Loki and caused a pang of yearning to swell deep inside him. The music got louder and louder the closer he made it towards the alcove, becoming earsplitting, until it stopped suddenly as Loki finally stood over a roughly made cradle of ice and saw its occupant.

 

Blood red eyes stared up at Loki as the babe’s cries turned from all out bawling to quiet weeping. Barely able to recognize the infant as a frost giant, Loki could only tell by his dark ice blue skin covered in intricate lines and his red eyes. By the evidence of the baby being without clothing or even a blanket to cover him, Loki guessed whoever left him was not returning. He felt pity for the child, to be abandoned by the people who birthed you left a scar wide and deep as a canyon. Putting out a hand Loki, went to calm the frightened thing and watched as his hand turned into golden liquid the moment he touched the infant. Pulling his hand back it reformed back to normal like one of the many copies he loved to create. The sudden muffled sound of footsteps coming closer startled Loki, and turning around, he saw a silhouette he knew far too well. Odin walked out into the open, vastly different from the man Loki was used to, young as the statues on Asgard and his coronation portrait depicted him. The only difference was the empty, bloody eye socket instead of the patch that seemed to define his father to Loki. Odin looked around until he pinpointed the area the crying came from, and moving towards it, he walked straight through Loki before his son could get out of the way.

 

Stepping aside, Loki turned back to cradle and watched as Odin inspected its contents before plucking the child out with both hands. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then the babe’s skin, starting at its feet, began to shift from blue to a pale flesh colour, and once it reached his face, the right eye turned green while the left sluggishly followed suit. It clicked for Loki then: he was seeing the moment his father found him and decided to take him as some kind sick trophy of war. As Odin left to return to his men and Asgard, Loki fell to his knees in dismay. He’d never learnt the real truth of his beginnings during the chaos that was his failed coup. Over the last few years, Loki had imagined many different scenarios of how it had happened, and most of them were ten times more horrifying. To have it laid in front of him so plainly was torturous. Odin had saved him from mortal peril, and in a way Loki felt thankful, though no manner of gratitude could undo the damage inflicted over the many years by the man he’d called father.  Odin chose to hone his innocent sons into weapons for the glory of Asgard, and what had he ended up with? One son a monster so detestable he hid in the darkness, while the other became a warrior destined to slay the beast and bring light to the world.

 

Behind him, Loki sensed three figures materialize out of thin air, and he asked them a simple question, “Why show me this?

He received his answer shortly as they spoke in unison, causing a sound only able to be described as the hum of the universe.

“No one chooses how their life begins. Every living thing in the Nine Realms is at the mercy of fate. You were born in a war during an endless winter, abandoned by your blood kin and found by a man who saw you as a tool for peace. It’s important to know where you came from before we gift you with a new life.”

“Do I have choice in what my new life is like?” Loki replied, his eyes glued to the empty cradle that moments earlier had held an uncorrupted version of himself.

“To a certain degree. We cannot change the past as it has already happened, but the present is flexible enough to do a minor correction. But it has to be based on a path untravelled. One where things would’ve been drastically different if you’d gone down it. Think carefully on what you change, as it cannot be undone.”

 

Loki thought deeply on the parts of his life he wished beyond anything had not happened, so many moments where he’d lost control and ended with the wrong outcome. He never wanted the days after Thor’s failed coronation to go the way they did; the throne and kingship weren’t things he wanted and suited him poorly. Loki’s actions were his way of showing his brother he cared, to try and show him his behaviour would be the downfall of Asgard and himself if he didn’t curb it. Thor deserved to become the best king in the Nine Realms and surpass their father, and Loki had taught him in the only ways he could: with deception and schemes. It worked better than he ever believed, except it came with the heavy price of Thor no longer trusting him, an expense Loki could pay knowing full well his life would never have a happy ending. Odin drilled that knowledge into him over and over throughout the many years of his youth, that Loki was a tool to be used and someday discarded, a presence tolerated by Odin and not something to be given the attention gifted so freely to Thor. Which is why, when the Allfather shook his head in disappointment and told him no as he hung over a starry abyss, Loki chose to let go. The uncertain darkness of the universe below was better than the punishment he’d have undergone if Odin got his hands on him, something Loki experienced personally many, many years ago. At least this time, escape from the wretched life he hated was assured, unlike his first and only attempt at running away from Asgard, back when he had someone he cared about as a parent waited for Loki to join them, and freedom beckoned to him sweetly. Over everything that happened in his life, that was the moment he wished he could go back to.

 

Closing his eyes tight, Loki focused hard on the regret he had spent so many years trying to repress and allowed the power borrowed from the Norns to change him. It thrummed just under the skin as it forged Loki into a form he’d dared not touch for over five hundred years, and the blood in his veins turned to ice as his body was slowly swallowed by familiar golden light. The transformation started slow with the growth of his hair, a sleek black waterfall ending just above his waist. Loki’s face softened a touch while remaining sharp and haughty, still recognizable to those close to him and who knew what to look for. Loki’s chest narrowed in some places and widened in others, while his body gained a more defined waistline. He shifted into a state that was more or less a newer version of Loki.

 

The ice temple around him dissolved into black smoke filled with flecks of light which floated upwards into the stars above. The magic engulfing Loki seeped out of him like water, stripping him of his armor and leaving behind the sensation of cold air on his skin. The feeling of powerlessness forced Loki’s eyes open as he looked down to see his clothing had been replaced with strange attire seen briefly on Midgard; the other change was the resurgence of the tattoos he’d disguised with magic the same time he gave up this form. The head of a grey dire wolf on Loki’s chest snarled proudly, its mouth twitching as fangs dripped blood. Writhing around a perfect rendition of Mjølnir was an emerald green serpent emblazoned on Loki’s left arm, and on the right a rough outline of an eight legged horse galloping. The last tattoo, hidden by clothes, was the simple bust of a young woman, half her face pale as an Asgardian while the other was the deep blue of a Frost Giant. Her hair was tied in two blonde braids, a smallish horn jutted out on one side of her head, and her blinking eyes were two different hues of blood red and forest green.

 

A flash of movement caught Loki’s gaze as he noticed the puddle of liquid only a few feet in front of him. It twitched and writhed as it moulded itself into a humanoid lump. It flashed a final burst of light as bright as the sun, blinding Loki and causing him to shield his face with his arms.

 

Once it cleared Loki lowered his arms and came face to face with an exact copy of his former self, wearing his armor and struggling to breathe. Blood spilled down its chin as a hole appeared in its abdomen which quickly grew larger until Loki could see the universe beyond. The wound appeared to be static as neither blood or intestines poured out of it, keeping in place as if the flesh remained and it did not exist. Loki recognized the injury as a duplicate of the one he’d inflicted on Thor with his actions on Midgard... a fitting way to end his former life and for the Norns to fulfil their side of the bargain. A sharp pain and the feeling of fluid running down his face broke Loki out of his thoughts, and after bringing his hand to his head, Loki pulled it away and gawked confusedly at the blood staining his fingers. The world greyed as Loki collapsed onto his side and the other him mirrored the fall, their two bodies creating a circle on the rough floor. Loki’s last disorientated thoughts were selfish glee at Thor mourning over him and jealousy at the fake him being the one who’d reap that attention. This second death would undeniably break his brother again, an unavoidable pain Loki hoped Thor one day could forgive. Holding tight onto the memory of Thor’s last smile to him, Loki drifted back into nothingness, ready to be reborn anew, far from the anguish which bore him and to experience a life different from his own.

 

***

 

On Midgard, the now mortal Loki stood staring into a mirror in a Hell’s Kitchen hospital bathroom, confused and vulnerable. They ignored the commotion coming from the locked door as medical staff tried to persuade Loki to open it; instead they focused on the mirror and the storm swirling inside them. Lifeless green eyes gazed back through a gap in their greasy black hair as the last few days replayed in Loki’s head, until it became a blur. They had woken up alone in a hospital bed without an idea of what had happened, and then spent endless hours spent being checked on by nurses before a doctor became available to talk. The doctor spoke kindly if not briskly of the details of the accident and injury caused by the rubble falling on them during the battle of New York, an event Loki had no recollection of. Loki’s attention waned as they learnt the concussion and brain damage meant their memory loss of the last month might be permanent, numbness creeping over them as the conversation went on. They’d already had their childhood stolen in a grey fog of dysphoria and trauma, and to lose another piece broke Loki in a way they thought was long impossible. Triggering memories of the man they called father who crushed them so many years before, though this wasn't the cause for Loki’s current breakdown.

 

The catalyst to Loki’s current predicament had been the stupid newspaper left by a well meaning nurse on their bedside table, a way to help reorientate themselves after escaping death by a hair. The front page showed an iconic image of all seven heroes of New York staring at the gaping hole in the sky as a giant whale like alien breached through it. Intrigued, Loki had opened it up and scanned the pages filled with blurry photographs taken by bystanders on phones of the invasion. The pictures of destruction took Loki’s breath away. Very few buildings in the small space had come out intact or undamaged, and rubble littered the street as the aftermath showed survivors and firemen working together to search for people trapped underneath the wreckage. Turning back to the beginning, Loki checked the timeline and map of the epicentre, figuring out they’d been found only a few hundred metres from Stark Tower. Moving on to the main story, Loki read about the people who’d come out of nowhere to defend the city, standing up to fight things humans weren’t prepared to. Only two of the seven heroes had been named; Captain America and Iron Man were well known to the public, but the others bared no official names other than aliases given by eyewitnesses and anonymous informants. The most heartbreaking image was of the group standing on as the one wearing a cape knelt on the ground, holding a dead body. The paper had tried to censor the gore covering them both, but it was impossible to blur out that much red. The flavour text underneath it informed Loki that the corpse’s identity as the leader of the invasion and brother to man holding him, and looking back at it they could see the anguish in the man’s body language. It must be painful to lose a sibling in such a way Loki couldn’t imagine; they’d never had anyone they loved as much as the hero felt about his brother. Next to the wide shot, an enlarged frame of the villain’s face caused something to break in Loki, the stark contrast of blue skin against grey rubble triggering a fight or flight reflex in them which they’d listened to and run.

 

Hands gripping the sides of the cold sink basin as blood dripped down their arm, Loki tried to figure out why the picture had caused them such an extreme reaction, but the only thing coming to mind was that maybe they’d seen the guy before they were buried under rubble. There was no way of knowing though. The last month had been lost in a black fog which might never clear and held all the answers Loki sorely needed. Looking into the mirror, Loki noticed the tattoo on their left forearm was smudged in blood, the medieval hammer dyed crimson as the emerald snake wrapped around the handle and head appeared to bask in the gore. Turning the tap on with an elbow, Loki held their arm underneath the cold spray, hissing at the stinging pain from where they ripped out their cannula. Loki allowed the water to run until the liquid changed from copper to clear and their arm was almost numb from cold. Shutting it off, they grabbed a paper towel and roughly dried the skin. Accidentally brushing their fingertips against the tattoo, Loki felt a spark of electricity flow through them, and almost memories raced through their mind of things they knew they had never experienced. A soft kiss placed on their forehead by someone with a beard, the weight of a hug filled with over brimming love, and finally the exhilaration of standing in a thunderstorm and knowing it wouldn’t harm them for a reason long forgotten. Those fuzzy, indecipherable sensations were something Loki longed to hold onto and keep as they slipped through their fingers like grains of sand, leaving them with an indescribable pain in their chest and an emptiness as familiar as their name.

 

Loki looked back into the mirror and shrank backwards until their back hit the cold tiled wall in a failed attempt at escaping the vision standing on the other side of the glass. Staring at Loki was the figure of the dead man from the newspaper, except he wore a gold horned helmet over his greasy slicked back hair and held a strange sceptre in one hand. His icy blue eyes chilled Loki to the bone; unfocused, they held no emotion other than barely concealed hatred, and an unhinged grin plastered his sneering face. Stepping forward, Loki reached for mirror and touched the surface with their fingertips as the vision copied them, his smile vanishing to be replaced with a look of despair.

 

The cold blue eyes shifted to green as he spoke, “Do not end up here again. Forget the past and focus on the now, lest the darkness inside consume you.”

 

Somewhere within the void of nothingness in Loki, began a cacophony of voices, all calling them to ignore the advice and listen instead to them. Freezing Loki in place, the different voices echoed louder and louder until they couldn’t handle it anymore. Grabbing an overlooked vase on the side of the basin, Loki threw it at the mirror and silenced the voices, watching as both items shattered and several large chunks of glass fell out of the frame into the basin below. In a bisected kaleidoscope of reflections, Loki stood stunned as the door behind them burst open. Various doctors and nurses rushed in and began to restrain the barely resisting Loki. The world started to spin as the faint pressure and stinging pain from a needle in their arm withdrew, informing Loki they were a few moments away from unconsciousness. The sweet embrace of sedative induced sleep was preferable to the cluttered thoughts that were waiting for Loki the moment they woke up.

 

***

 

The Norns with their immeasurable power carved a place on Midgard for Loki to slip into without issue, keeping their promise to give the prince a past where a life altering occurrence went differently. A new history woven out of the old, this Loki was found on a doorstep, abandoned by their birth parents and adopted by a rich older couple after they lost their firstborn. This was where the biggest change lay: Thor never existed, and Loki gained the experience of living without him.

 

Those years of Loki’s childhood were the worst in their life. Their adoptive mother was distant and watched idly as her husband abused their adoptive child. She was far too scared to stand up and protect Loki, so their life became an endless nightmare of emotional torture with rare episodes of physical punishment. At age sixteen the second divergence to Loki’s original history occurred: they ran away from home in the dead of night and escaped the poisoned influence of their parents. Taking a bus out of their home town with only a handful of cash and a bag of clothes, Loki found themselves free of the shackles holding them down most of their life. The next few years, Loki travelled all over the UK surfing on strangers’ couches and falling down into a self destructive spiral, finally ending up on the side of a London street covered in bruises and no money to their name.

 

That’s when Loki met their mentor, a tall, heavily tattooed older lady who took Loki in with no qualms and gave them a home as well as a calling, showing Loki how the pain inside could be soothed by the buzzing of a tattoo gun and satisfaction of creating something beautiful on another person’s skin. As time passed, the scared teen Loki was gradually replaced with one filled with self confidence, and their tattoos reflected that. Loki embraced a new name and the myths of old written by long dead humans attached to it, taking the lessons in them and applying them to how they viewed the world, preemptively cutting their own heart out so no one could ever use it against them as it had for Loki in the myths.

 

The Norns used Loki’s unsaid deepest desire to give them a chance to live outside Thor’s shadow, unknowingly removing a source of light needed to fully thrive. Lost in an endless twilight, Loki became blind in the darkness, missing an integral part they couldn’t fathom they’d lost and left with only a map of the bursts of starlight Thor burned inside Loki to guide them until they met again.

 

***

 

Music drifted out of a window in Hell’s Kitchen and mingled with the bustle of traffic below. Inside a smallish apartment, Loki sang along with a stereo perched precariously on a step ladder. Over a month had gone by since they were discharged from Metro-General Hospital, and they’d caught several lucky breaks, starting with not needing to spend much time on the psych ward after the breakdown in the bathroom. The doctor overseeing them had been very understanding that the confusion from the brain damage was the main cause for it, and had let them off with a recommendation for therapy. Afterwards Loki learnt they wouldn’t have to pay anything for their medical costs as Tony Stark, in the days following the battle, pledged to pay all bills of the survivors and funerals of the people who weren’t as lucky. The last bit of luck came from finding out at some point during the blank hole of time in their head that Loki had bought and ordered renovation for a disused free clinic. Apparently it had gone out of business and needed to be sold quick and cheap. The money coming from the inheritance left to Loki from their recently deceased parents was pretty much all used up to buy and renovate the place. The apartment was the former admin/staff area which had been the first place to have work done, turning it into a cosy two bedroom flat with an open plan living room/kitchen. Loki adored their new home and started to decorate and move stuff in the moment they could.

 

Most of Loki’s furniture had been bought either off craigslist or from thrift shops as the stuff they’d bothered to be shipped over from the UK were books and sentimental items. The living area was now dominated by an L shaped monstrosity of a sofa, the black leather covering it worn soft from use. The walls had been painted a dark forest green and a mishmash of rugs were spread randomly over the hardwood floors. Two bookcases bought from Ikea made out of wood and metal took over the opposite wall from the sofa, one already filled entirely by Loki’s collection of novels and a handful of tattoo reference books. The other had an eccentric mix of objects placed higgledy-piggledy on the shelves. The top one was dedicated to Loki’s altar and held the items used for their witchcraft with such things as candles, a jar filled with money, a plush raven and crystals taking precedence on the cramped shelf. Loki’s favourite piece in the entire apartment had been uncovered in a tiny antique shop down the street: hanging grandly on a spare bit of wall was impressive head of a taxidermied deer, its teeth replaced by that of a wolf or a related canine, snarling at the room with its unnatural maw. The years of blood, sweat and tears were worth it for the sense of accomplishment Loki felt at standing in their own home and close to achieving the dream they’d spent so long working for. It stung to know it came out of the death of their parents and the money left to them, but the bright side was they longer needed to rent out their mentor’s spare room.

 

Flopping onto the aged sofa, Loki closed their eyes and enjoyed the smell of fresh paint and the feel of breeze from the open window on their skin. Losing themselves in the beat of the music, Loki allowed their thoughts to roam freely. They’d always believed the moment everything came together, the emptiness eating at them from deep inside would abate slightly, except it hadn’t. Something forever felt missing in Loki’s life, an internal jigsaw puzzle with lost pieces that they tried so hard to find. Maybe they were everything Loki’s father had told them, a wolf in a herd of sheep play acting at not being a predator, a defective replacement for a child who never made it past infancy and worst of all an unlovable mistake so broken they weren’t worth fixing. Despite the distance Loki put between them and their adoptive parents over the last nine years, those words took root deeply within their mind, impacting every relationship Loki ever had out of fear they would taint their partners with the rottenness hidden underneath the surface, deadening their heart’s ability to connect to other people and isolating them from the world. Over the years, Loki took the pain and filed it into sharp edges, both a weapon to keep people away and a blade they cut themselves with to try to feel something, a double edged sword Loki played with recklessly, not caring whoever ended up harmed by it.

 

Out of nowhere, something dense jumped onto Loki’s chest and broke them out of their melancholic thoughts, and opening their eyes, they came face to face with a pair of bright blue slitted eyeballs. Not wanting to spook the visitor, Loki began to pet the animal’s head and got a better look at it. The very large tomcat which enthusiastically reciprocated the affection by headbutting Loki’s hand and purring was a blond tabby with a white neck, stomach and paws. The cat appeared to be a stray since he wore no collar and his fur had turned a greyish colour from a mixture of car exhaust and street grime. Loki knew they should force the cat out or at least take it to a shelter; feral tomcats never made good pets. Except his sad blue eyes stared into Loki’s soul and begged to be loved and stroked by them. Loki couldn't really argue with that, and he did break them out of a depressive episode; they also couldn’t ignore such a sweet kitty’s pleas to be cared for, which is when Loki realized they’d pretty much just adopted this cat. Considering everything, taking in a street cat was not the worst thing in the world. He’d probably keep down the rodent population and help alleviate some of Loki’s loneliness while they found their feet. The last thing to do was name the cat, and Loki toyed with the name Lightning since his fur reminded them of lightning bolts, until he ripped a fart loud enough to cut through both the stereo and traffic. Then in a burst of inspiration, the perfect name came to Loki, and grabbing the cat, they got up off the sofa and walked towards the bathroom, whispering into the struggling animal’s ear, “Welcome to your new home, Thor. I’m afraid it’s bath time for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally a lighter chapter with some fun in it, have to say writing this chapter was really hard and took me over a week to figure out. Then again I'm really happy how it came out.


	4. Chapter 4

Nervously, Loki sat on the lid of a toilet inside their cramped slightly dilapidated bathroom, tapping their feet as they waited for their cell phone alarm to go off. The five minutes Loki needed to wait for the results of the pregnancy test sitting on the side of the sink were an eternity they filled with worrying. Head in their hands, Loki tried to keep calm by taking several deeps breaths in and out while their stomach betrayed them by writhing in a mixture of anxiety and nausea. Soon they would find out if their worst fears were true or not, and Loki had no idea how they would feel when they knew. The thought of pregnancy or parenthood didn’t terrify Loki as much as the black void surrounding the identity of the father. The huge swath of blank memories from the accident two months ago still unsettled Loki, and poking at it to try and recover anything overloaded them with a sense of dread. Ignoring the void was better in the long run for Loki’s already fragile mental state and a practice they were well acquainted with.

 

The alarm began to blare, and Loki quickly silenced it, taking in one final deep breath before reaching for the test. The blue cross of a positive result stared back at Loki.

 

The information took a few seconds to register in Loki’s brain, and then panic set in. Chasing the small chance of it being a false positive, Loki grabbed the cardboard packet and tore out two more tests. Twenty minutes later they held all three in one hand as the undeniable knowledge that they were pregnant sunk in. Tears streamed down Loki’s face as they restrained themselves from screaming in frustration.

 

Anger bloomed within Loki; after so many years of being careful to shut people out, someone had managed to bypass their defences and change everything. The kicker was Loki would never know how that person managed it, the encounter lost in the shapeless black void of another lifetime ago, similar to the grey fog Loki’s childhood was sacrificed to many years before. The world had never been kind to Loki; abandoned by both sets of parents they were given to, and in the case of their adopted parents, a replacement for a long dead child loved more than them. Damaged long before most people could understand true pain, Loki took it all and fashioned it into weapons of malice and deceit, as well as an armor they used to protect their fragile heart which, over time and starved of love, petrified. The emptiness inside had become the norm in their solitary existence, but now they were no longer alone.

 

Loki wouldn’t lie to themselves and say the thought of getting rid of the clump of cells didn’t cross their mind. At the moment they were not in a good spot emotionally, and the stresses of readying their tattoo shop to open overwhelmed Loki with fears of failure anytime something went awry. Their dream was almost at their fingertips, and a baby could wreck everything Loki had worked hard for. Loki wanted to hate it, to think of it as a pest to be exterminated, but they couldn’t imagine doing it.

 

Putting a hand on their abdomen, the almost sensation of fluttering light eased Loki’s heart, a secret source of love and sunshine which illuminated Loki’s dark world purging the fear deep in their heart and replacing it with a calm certainty. It didn’t matter if they were a monster; the father might not be, and if he was and their child one too, Loki would bear the title of mother proudly.

 

A scuffle at the slightly ajar door drew Loki’s attention from their crowded mind. Pushing the door wider, Thor the cat scuttled in through the gap. Tail head high, he meowed loudly before scampering to his owner, sliding on the tile as he went. Finally at his destination, Thor started to rub himself against Loki’s legs and purr. Picking the big oaf of a cat up off the floor, Loki snuggled him and took comfort in the warmth. Cradling the cat like a baby, Loki walked out of the bathroom and into the kitchen/living area. Dropping Thor onto an island counter, Loki shuffled things around until they found a pen and a pad of a paper. A plan of action needed to be drawn up for the next few months, and absentmindedly stroking Thor, Loki started to write a list.

 _• Make an appointment to confirm pregnancy_  
_• Research prenatal care and child development_  
_• Fast track furnishing the studio_  
_• Finish hiring/interviewing tattoo artists/receptionist_  
_• Figure out how to work while heavily pregnant_ _  
_     _• Try to find the Father?_

The things of greatest importance on the list were confirming the pregnancy and locating the father. The first would be easy; all Loki needed to do was to phone a Planned Parenthood and book an appointment. The second on the other hand, would be complicated. Even if Loki had a Facebook account, the odds of finding the dude were astronomical. The people they’d known back in England were never what Loki could consider close friends, and none of them knew anything about Loki’s sexual history, every relationship or fling a well guarded secret. The last hope lay in the slim chance Loki’s memories came back, and at this point it was doubtful they’d return. The search worthless, Loki crossed out the last bullet point until all of the writing vanished under black ink. It looked like they had a lot of work ahead of them to prepare everything for a baby.

 

Leaving the counter, Loki sequestered themselves onto one end of the leather sofa and snagged one of the blankets off the back. Once wrapped inside a cocoon of soft grey fabric, Loki was joined by Thor who wiggled his way into the covers. Stroking him, Loki’s emotions boiled over, feeling both apprehension and excitement at the idea of becoming a parent, and promising themselves no matter what they’d do better than both their bio and adoptive parents combined.

 

***

 

Several months later, many things changed for Loki. The opening of their tattoo studio Ragnarok Ink was a minor success due to the novelty of its name, the Avengers’ popularity enough to draw business in with only a reference to Norse mythology. Thor had become a big hit among fans and renewed an interest in Viking culture and history, helped along by the fact he was the same god from the stories and an alien. Loki had freaked out after learning the main villain of the invasion shared their name and was also from another galaxy. Ignoring customers who gave strange looks after learning Loki’s name was a day to day norm now, Loki barely bothered by it since they weren’t overly interested in the Avengers. Just another quirk of living in a city that got ravaged by aliens and withstood to rebuild stronger than ever. Curiosity about the shop died down pretty quickly, leaving behind a steady stream of tourists and seasoned pros as Ragnarok Ink’s client base. A third, smaller demographic came in for a different service other than the tramp stamps and sleeves the studio usually dealt in, coming instead to see the tattoo artist rumoured to be the best at covering scars. Loki’s prowess and gentleness at turning the most gnarled scars into something beautiful to be proud of well was known in the community of survivors from the attack. Those clients were Loki’s favourites, and hearing their stories of bravery as Loki tattooed them was something they wouldn’t trade for the world. Helping them move past life altering trauma by transforming the marks left behind into something magnificent fulfilled Loki in a way they had never found in London.

 

Sitting on one of the waiting room couches at Ragnarok Ink, Loki rested their legs on the glass coffee tables as they flipped through trashy gossip magazines and they waited for their next appointment to arrive. At this point in their pregnancy, they’d developed a sizeable bump, nothing too big Loki couldn't work around but enough to cause some problems. The morning sickness which hit them hard at near the start had mostly faded, leaving in its place a nasty backache and an increased need to go to the bathroom. They were taking a ”Which Avenger are you?” test in the current rag they were perusing (the result being Black Widow--Loki wasn’t sure if they were happy with that or not) when the front door opened with a jingle, catching their attention. Loki looked up as a professionally dressed woman walked into the shop; wearing a well tailored suit jacket with matching skirt, she held herself with an air of regality. Perfectly applied makeup accentuated her kind face, and her heels were plain in a way which denoted they were designer exclusive. Examining her surroundings, she noticed the receptionist talking on the phone at the front desk and strode over there with her heels clicking on the vinyl flooring, waiting patiently for Maddie to finish her call before talking.

 

The woman’s tone was calm and eloquent as she spoke, “Hello, I booked a consultation with Loki Smith for one o’clock. I am in the right place, yes?”

“You are. Just give me a sec.” Maddie carelessly started to sift through the mountain of files on the desk, knocking bottles of nail varnish and pens onto the floor until she found the clipboard containing today’s schedule. Running a finger down the sheet, Maddie stopped as she reached the right entry and called out to her boss, “Hey Lo, your one o’clock is here.”

The client turned around to locate the person the receptionist was addressing, watching as Loki awkwardly pushed themselves off the sofa and walked towards her, unknowingly greeting their forgotten mother by asking, “Welcome, Mrs….?”

“Frigga, please call me Frigga,” she replied, and her smile stretched in a grimace as she was forced to come to terms with the fact Loki really did not remember their mother. The differences between the Loki she’d raised and the person stood before her were vast, their clothing a stark change from what they’d usually worn on Asgard. Loki was dressed in an oversized tee shirt covered in holes with a black tank underneath, concealing the bump of their pregnancy, as well as black glittery leggings and a pair of black boots. Despite their condition, mortal Loki held themselves with a confidence alien to the Asgardian counterpart Frigga knew. The haunted look in their eyes replaced with a gleam she’d not seen since Loki was a child. Everything together truly made Loki glow in a way which put Frigga’s heart at ease.

Loki nodded at her and started to talk.

“Okay, Frigga, let’s go to my room and talk over what you want in private. Please just follow me.”

 

Loki led Frigga towards where the ex-examination rooms were in the back, and stopped as they reached the door emblazoned with Loki’s name. Opening it, Loki let their client in first before entering and closing the door behind them. The space Loki occupied had plenty of their personal touches in it, the bright red walls covered in framed prints of classical Nordic art, and two taxidermied ravens stared down from their perches on a set of shelves.  Loki gestured at Frigga to sit on one of the two plastic chairs by the raised tattoo bed while they went looking for a pad of drawing paper and a sketching pencil. Frigga became engrossed by the decorating choices, knowing she’d definitely found her lost child. Everything screamed Loki from the Midgardian artwork of Asgardian gods to the assortment of bleached white bones and dazzling broken crystals littering the shelves. From the corner of her eye, Frigga noticed Loki found the items they needed and had sat down on one of the chairs. Taking it as a cue that the consultation had begun, she took the chair opposite.

 

“So what exactly do you want me to do?”

Frigga shed her suit jacket and rolled up the right sleeve of her blouse, revealing a long gnarled scar dull from age. “I want to tattoo this over with something that won’t hide it, but will accentuate it instead. I was thinking maybe a needle and thread sewing it together if it isn’t too much of a hassle.”

Rolling over, Loki took her arm in theirs and inspected the skin closely, barely noticing the flutter as their baby kicked at the contact with Frigga, and answered, “That’ll be super easy to do. I could even do it today if you want?”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

Frigga withdrew her arm away from Loki and tried to put some distance between them, scared her proximity would break the magic keeping Loki’s memories locked away.

 

“Nah it’s fine, I have nothing else this afternoon,” Loki replied as they started to draw something on the paper on their knee, flipping it over once they were done to show a simple design of thread stitching closed a rough sketch of Frigga’s scar, the needle poking halfway through at one end. She adored it, observing the exact likeness of one of the needles from her sewing set at home. Some part of Loki remembered her and it was enough to convince her to stay. Moving on the bed, she allowed Loki to transfer the stencil onto her arm and waited as they gathered the needed tools together. Soon the sound of buzzing permeated the room as Loki began to embed the ink into Frigga’s fair skin, both making small talk over the noise of the gun. Loki learnt she used to be a midwife back in her home country of Norway before her ex-husband forced her to quit and move to America after she became pregnant with her eldest. As well as the struggle of leaving him after the death of their youngest, someone Frigga told them they would have gotten on well with. The tattoo was a memorial for the child she’d lost and missed greatly everyday. Loki couldn’t imagine the pain of losing a child as they’d begun to grasp becoming a parent recently,  and sympathising with her, Loki opened up about their past, and they bonded over the shared pain in their stories. Finishing the final line of the tattoo, Loki leant back, stretching out as they rolled backwards, allowing Frigga to look at the completed piece.

Brushing her fingers over the newly marked skin, Frigga felt the love and care put into it, understanding Loki knew who she was even without their memories, as strong feelings couldn’t truly be erased.

“It’s perfect, thank you. This means so much to me,” Frigga gushed and brought her lost child into a tight embrace.

Loki reciprocated gladly, feeling a warmth flow through them they’d only experienced when their child moved within them. Wrapping up Frigga’s arm, Loki went through the aftercare instructions before directing her to the front desk with the receipt to pay. The session over, Frigga put on her jacket and picked up her handbag off the floor, readying herself to leave. Loki almost let her go before a feeling of being kindred spirits overcame them. The two of them were in New York without anyone to talk to, and Loki needed a friend to lean on. Snagging their sketch pad, Loki quickly scribbled down their cellphone number on the top page and ripped it off, calling as they rushed down the corridor to get Frigga’s attention before she left the shop. Catching up to her, Loki gave her the scrap of paper and said, “Here’s my number. I think we should go for coffee sometime since we are both new to the city.”

Frigga nodded enthusiastically, answering, “I’d love to,” folding the piece of paper and placing it into a pocket. With a short goodbye. she departed from the shop and onto the busy street, lost almost immediately in the bustle of foot traffic.

 

Frigga stopped farther up the street and sequestered herself into an alleyway. Deep down she feared Loki had forgotten about her. The fact they’d drawn something so intimate to her and reached out meant somewhere Loki unconsciously remembered.  The tapestry she’d spent most of her time weaving over the last few months had showed her flashes of Loki’s life, the news of the pregnancy a surprise but not an unwelcome one. Frigga had started to take expeditions off Asgard using the path Loki had shown her so many years before, and each trip she spent searching for her lost child. A chance conversation she overheard about a newly opened tattoo place with Norse theming pointed her in the direction of Ragnarok Ink. Making the appointment had been easy, and seeing her son thriving in a way he’d never done on Asgard had been worth losing him in the first place. Satisfied Loki was safe, Frigga vanished in a blink of an eye to return to Asgard and her duty as Allmother.

 

***

 

Every Friday over the next month, it became a routine for Frigga and Loki to meet at a cafe close to Ragnarok Ink. The first time they talked only about the major adjustment of moving to an entirely new place and to settle without the support both were used to. By week two they started to open up to each other about their respective pasts. Loki told Frigga how their parents never truly accepted them and that they had chosen to run away at age sixteen, and Frigga spoke of losing her son to suicide and the fact her firstborn couldn’t forgive her for failing his brother, abandoning the family not long after the funeral.

 

Week three was when Frigga finally divulged the story of the scar on her arm, carefully editing it so not to trigger Loki’s memories of their past life though keeping the same basic structure. A family meal from many years ago which went awry as Odin’s anger surfaced when Loki and Thor wouldn’t stop flicking food at each other from across the table. He had grabbed one of the steak knives off the table and gone after Loki, but Frigga had somehow managed to get between them as the knife made contact with flesh, and Loki was knocked backwards. The knife embedded deep within her arm, she had turned away from Odin to tend to her petrified son, wiping his tears away as she noticed the beginnings of a black eye. Frigga had removed the knife and dropped it in front of her husband before removing both Loki and Thor from his presence. She could’ve easily healed the wound with her magic, but Frigga had kept it as a warning to Odin: if he ever laid another hand on her children once more, she would tell all of Asgard what kind of man the Allfather was. It had worked, and he never went for either child in front of her again, not realizing he just hid the abuse in private instead.

 

Loki, horrified at the story of how much of a bastard her ex-husband was, comforted Frigga as she broke down at failing both her children when they needed her most. After that revelation, Loki decided to include her in their pregnancy, asking her to be their birth partner when the time came, mending a bridge they had no idea they’d broken years before.

 

***

 

Months passed as Loki’s bump got slowly more and more prominent, becoming impossible to disguise under baggy clothing. Their time was now split between running the studio and the multitude of prenatal check ups, Lamaze classes and ultrasounds, joined by Frigga. By month seven the symptoms of pregnancy began ramping up with unendurable heartburn, torturous backache and extreme insomnia, making it not abnormal for Loki to spend nights laid out on the sofa in the living room, drinking fruit tea and either reading or talking to Frigga over the phone to try and drift off to sleep.  When exhaustion did overtake Loki, strange dreams plagued their slumber, always starting with them falling down an endless pit of nothingness, and finally as they hit the unseen ground, Loki’s surroundings were vastly different each time: the eternal snowy wastes of the Arctic circle, a labyrinth of never-ending silent caves, a ruined empty New York and a deathly still dungeon to name a few. Desolation and despair set in as they walked through each scene, and the only thing stopping them from being full-blown nightmares was the comforting crash of thunder overhead, as well as ending each time with sun breaking through the angry grey clouds to shine on Loki and turn the fear inside them to safety. Then Loki would wake up bleary eyed, trying to chase the fleeting nature of the dream as if their life depended on it. Those nights Loki found themselves seeking relief by placing their hands on their expanding bump and knowing they weren’t alone. When their eyes grew heavy with sleep, Loki sometimes swore they saw a person watching over them, a golden haired woman wearing armor that matched who smiled down at Loki from the edge of the bed, her kind face the last thing their eyes processed as they fell back to sleep. In the cold light of day, Loki rationalized it as Thor sneaking into their room to curl up on the bed, and tried to ignore the itching feeling of familiarity the presence gave them.

 

On the last day of 2012, Loki rested on their couch, pillows propping up their back as they went through bookings for Ragnarok Ink, surprised when they realized the limited spots Loki had put aside for themselves were almost full. Loki stopped doing walk in clients for the time being in preparation for when their attention would be split between running the day to day of the shop and caring for a newborn. Things had gone quiet in Loki’s life since it became impossible to move without a tiny limb jamming into their ribs, and they preferred to stay at home for New Year’s to enjoy the last bastion of peace before the inevitable. Even Thor knew to leave them alone and hid under Loki’s bed to escape the early fireworks from over enthusiastic revellers.

 

Adjusting themselves slightly, Loki felt a twinge in their lower back, thinking nothing of it, since it was a month too early and probably false contractions… until another happened, then another and another clued Loki in on it maybe being real. The pain steadily getting worse and the contractions becoming closer together, Loki hastily found their phone and called for an ambulance, gathering their go bag and placing it by the door while on hold. Once they’d been put through to an operator, Loki explained the situation and was given confirmation of an ambulance was on its way. They texted Frigga the moment the call ended to meet Loki at the hospital as go time had come. The two paramedics who arrived a mere fifteen minutes later confirmed Loki’s worst fears and packed them into the waiting ambulance, turning on their sirens to fast track Loki to hospital.

 

Several hours later, Loki had been made comfortable in the delivery suite and joined by Frigga. Entering the last stages of labour, contractions came every few minutes, and Loki held Frigga’s hand for dear life as two midwives concentrated on delivering the baby safely. To some the company of people unrelated to them during a time of high stress would be isolating, except through every wave of pain Loki took solace in the warmth of the woman helping them. Finally as the urge to push came, the midwives and Frigga manoeuvred Loki onto their knees with their arms resting on the head of the bed. Things started to blur together as they lost themselves in the sensations of the contractions and pushing every time a midwife told Loki to. Frigga’s whispered support of, “You can do this Loki,” and, “You’re so close to being able to rest,” rang in Loki’s ears. The encouragement rallied Loki’s last tank of energy, and with one final push, the head passed through the birth canal and a second smaller push delivered the body. Collapsing onto their side, screams echoed inside the small hospital room while a midwife announced it was a girl. After that she gently placed the baby on Loki’s chest, being mindful of the umbilical cord still connecting the two. Enraptured, Loki gazed at the perfection that was their new daughter, marvelling at her tiny fingers and nails. Carefully, they wiped away some of the fluid off her face to get a better look at her features. Her gender had never mattered to Loki during the pregnancy, deliberately asking to not be told during the scans. They only wanted a healthy baby, and Loki had received that. They already loved their daughter, from the angry pink skin to the dark blonde hair plastered flat to her head. The axis of Loki’s world shifted to revolve around her, the centre of their solar system now the tiny brightly burning sun on their chest.

 

Frigga watched on from a chair in the corner as Loki cooed over their new baby, glad she’d left Asgard to attend to them over the last few months. Tradition dictated any heir to the throne’s birth needed to be overseen by a sitting monarch so they were considered legitimate. Frigga had not come in that capacity, instead here as Loki’s mother and now a grandmother, and she was glad she’d chosen to keep an eye out to help make the pregnancy go as smooth as possible, reducing the ailments of carrying a child with her magic as well as easing the nightmares tormenting Loki’s sleep.

 

Asgard’s atmosphere as of late was oppressive from the constant dark storm clouds overhead caused by Thor’s mourning of Loki while Odin stewed in venomous anger as his eldest refused to obey him. The kingdom suffering the absence of the Allmother as she’d withdrawn from court in grief, Asgard needed Frigga’s calming touch to temper the King’s fury, and without it, things had begun to deteriorate at a fast pace. Frigga, emotionally fatigued from years of playing peacemaker between her husband and the Nine Realms, no longer cared. She only wanted to be able to indulge in being an ordinary mother and to fuss over her first grandchild, patiently waiting until Loki passed out from exhaustion before finally inspecting the small bundle inside the plastic cot by the bed.

 

The babe stirred in her crib yet remained silent and calm as Frigga neared, seeming to understand she could trust her grandmother. It did not surprise the Allmother that the infant princess was so astute; she held within her the blood of two great magic users. Tenderly, Frigga picked up her granddaughter and smiled at the newborn while rocking her slowly from side to side. Oh, how she'd missed being able to dote on a newborn. Touching her forehead, Frigga let the glamour covering her drop, and her bright green eyes, inherited from Loki, shifted to the ruby red of her Jotun heritage. Frigga could see so much of both baby Loki and Thor in the little girl's demeanor, and knew truthfully that her lost son's memories still existed somewhere deep inside their mind, as they were unconsciously glamouring their child.

 

Waving her hand, Frigga summoned the gift she’d spent months knitting for her granddaughter from her bag on the other side of the room, a sky blue woollen blanket, soft as a cloud and filled with love and enchantments to keep her safe, the name Sǫlrún embroidered in gold lettering on a corner. Frigga wrapped the girl within its protection. Placing her back into the cot, she kissed her forehead, aware as Sǫlrún's name implied it was better she remained a secret source of sunlight on Midgard rather than being known to Asgard. One day all Nine Realms would learn the existence of the crown princess, but only after her father found Loki and restored their memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're halfway to the finish and things next chapter start to really ramp up. fun fact in every fic I write I put in little Easter eggs of stuff I actually own in real life.


	5. Chapter 5

Eleven months passed, and on a grizzly Tuesday morning, Loki strapped Sǫlrún into her high chair and sat down opposite her at the small dining table. Unscrewing the lid of the jar of applesauce, Loki snagged a rubber baby spoon and began to attempt to feed Sǫlrún her breakfast. The weekend prior both of them had been laid up with some kind of cold/flu mix and late last night it hit its peak. Sǫlrún, in her feverish state, screamed bloody murder and refused to settle in her cot, forcing Loki to retrieve her and let her fall asleep in their arms. In between her scratchy coughs, Loki tried to spoon the mush into her mouth, just to have Sǫlrún turn her head and knock the spoon out of her mother’s hand. Scrunching her face up she opened her mouth wide and started to all out bawl, flailing her arms and legs while the high chair underneath her swayed wildly. Sighing, Loki abandoned the fruitless task of forcing her to sit in the chair and undid the straps keeping her in, then lifted her out and placed her on their knee to hopefully make their sick baby more comfortable to eat. Finally getting what she wanted, Sǫlrún seized fistfuls of sauce and shoved it into her waiting mouth; most of it ended up on her face, bib and Loki’s lap. Once she’d finished what she wanted, Sǫlrún did what many toddlers do, pushing the bowl off the table before Loki could catch it and giggling as mushy bits of apple flew everywhere as it landed on the floor. Irritated, Loki wiped off Sǫlrún's face and removed the chunks of food hiding in her wavy gold hair as well as scraping the worst from their stained pyjama pants. Getting up, Loki took off her dirty bib and threw it into the laundry bin nearby and moved her into the living area. Placing her inside the playpen at the end of the sofa, Loki went to search for a clean pair of pants.

 

Elbow deep inside the clean unsorted laundry basket, several things happened in quick succession which disorientated Loki: Sǫlrún began to cry heart wrenching sobs while a white hot agonizing pain tore through their skull. The world around them blurred as nausea hit them hard in the gut, and stumbling over to the kitchen sink, Loki vomited. Lights danced over their vision as their chest painfully heaved in a desperate attempt to throw up nothing. A distant buzz Loki swore sounded like a voice called their name, and though they were unable to pinpoint any recognizable words, they could only tell it felt natural to them. Once the murmur and nausea faded, Sǫlrún's cries returned, and unconcerned with their own health or the mess in the sink, Loki rushed to her. Hoisting her out of the playpen, Loki checked for any signs of injury on her body, finding nothing physically wrong with Sǫlrún to cause such a reaction. Rocking her back and forth, Loki laid down on the sofa and set Sǫlrún onto their chest, forgetting about both the change of pants and the voice. Feeling a slight chill in the apartment, Loki pulled the blanket kept on the back of the sofa down and wrapped themselves in it. They’d probably left a window open a crack by accident. Turning on the TV, Loki put on one of the kids’ channels and made sure Sǫlrún could see. Getting lost in the bright colours and easiness of toddler shows, Loki spent the day on the old worn sofa, never noticing the slowly receding ice melting a few feet away on the kitchen counters and sink.

 

Three days later in Greenwich, London the Dark elves attacked. Glued to their TV, Loki watched in fear as Earth was invaded a second time, the carnage on the screen starkly different than the weakly shining sun outside. Engrossed in the news, they didn’t hear as Frigga unlocked and opened the door. Returning from a week’s vacation to visit her estranged eldest son in Norway, she knocked Loki out of their trance by banging a kitchen cabinet to take out two mugs for tea. Boiling the kettle, Frigga and Loki discussed how crazy the whole situation in England was. Later on after the battle had ended and Frigga went home, as Loki put Sǫlrún to bed, they realized the cold which made both of them so sick had vanished without a trace. Pinpointing its disappearance to the same time as the battle in London, Loki explained it away as a coincidence. What were the odds there was any correlation anyway? Turning off the nursery light, Loki went to bed and tried to forget the tragedy of the day.

 

***

 

Thor marched out of the throne room a final time after declaring to Odin his intention to renounce his claim to Asgard. Instead of returning straight back to Midgard and Jane, Thor took a detour down a well known path. Entering into the Allmother’s private apartments without her in them was an eerie sensation, the place still and empty in way Thor had never known. Coming across the blood stain on the stone floor near the balcony stopped him in his tracks; the last remnants of his mother’s existence caused a lump to form in Thor’s throat. The guilt of failing her like he’d failed Loki tore Thor apart inside; without either of their indirect help, the Dark Elves would’ve thrown the universe into darkness. To know Loki was still shaping his life so many years after his death gave Thor some solace. The knowledge of the secret pathways out of Asgard were not lost when Loki had been; his brother had taught their mother a few and in doing so helped Thor and Jane to escape and stop Malekith. Walking past the stain, Thor noticed out of the corner of his eye that the door to his mother’s workroom was ajar, which was slightly confusing, since he knew Frigga kept that room locked tight unless she herself was in there. Checking it, Thor peered through the gap in the door and saw a large tapestry laid on a wooden work table, and pushing it fully open, he entered the room.

 

The tapestries of Frigga’s life’s work surrounded Thor from all sides, the rainbow of many hues overwhelming him with brightness. Many of the unfinished ones were destined to remain attached to their looms forever or until someone moved them. Walking to the table with the tapestry he had seen a moment ago, Thor inspected it. Split in two, the top and bottom half were mirror images of a forest. The top section showed sunlight streaming through the leaves of the trees as a golden stag and a silver wolf drank side by side from the same river, both existing in the harmony of the day. The river’s reflection mirrored a different scene entirely, a full moon and a star filled night replaced the sun, clouds and blue sky above. The wolf now reared back on its hind quarters, mouth snarling as it bared its teeth and readied to pounce while the stag stood passive as it gazed on its doom, an eternal tragic dance they were forever fated to repeat. Pinned to the bottom was a note written in the recognizable scrawl of the Allmother.

 _Thor, time for you to hunt the wolf. You know who it is._ _  
_ _Love, Frigga_

Thor read it over and over again, puzzled at the mysterious note. His mother must’ve written this sometime during the attack on Asgard, and it must have been important enough to waste precious time penning it rather than escaping while she had the chance. The smudged ink and roughly torn edge indicated she’d done it in a rush. Taking out the pin, Thor went to remove the piece of paper off the cloth and instead accidently grazed the tapestry with his fingers. Frozen in place, the world around him dissolved into pitch black, and Thor stayed in the darkness for what felt like hours until it began to clear. He was now standing in a cave in what Thor knew was deep in the wilds of Asgard, water dripping from the ceiling as the ice of winter melted in the warm spring air. The place appeared to be someone’s home with a cold, unlit hearth in the centre, and a rough wooden table and two chairs were placed against a wall. Hidden in a corner sat a bed, and on it an indistinct lump lay motionless.

 

Before Thor could investigate, a snatch of colour drew his eye towards the long thin table covered almost entirely with little chests of drawers. A figure in a familiar green cloak lined with grey wolf’s fur sat hunched over, hood down and gloves off. Loki held a hollow metal tube ending with a needle in his left hand. Sleeve rolled up to his elbow, he pressed the object against his pale flesh and injected black ink underneath his skin, shakily drawing a crude outline of an eight legged horse. Teeth gritted, Loki finished the final line then placed the tube into a stout metal cup, and skin reddened, he placed his hand against it and allowed green magic to flow over it. Pulling it back, the skin returned bare of both tattoo and soreness as if neither ever existed. Standing up, Loki turned to face Thor and allowed him to see his eyes, red rimmed and puffy; it was obvious he’d been crying. Walking past Thor like he wasn’t there, Loki went to the corner and pulled back the covers on the bed. Finally the contents were revealed to Thor: the body of a large Jotun, long black braided hair with their arms crossed over their chest. Eyes closed, gold patterns covered them from top to toe and more gold adorned their horns, and the gaping wound on their side was the obvious answer to how they died. Loki tenderly kissed the body’s forehead and turned to leave, refusing to look behind himself as he walked out of the cave.

 

The scene faded, and Thor found himself back in Frigga’s workroom. Dazed, he rolled the tapestry up and placed it under his arm. Going into the main chambers, Thor searched through his mother’s belongings and picked out a gold brooch in the shape of Yggdrasil, the rattle both he and Loki used as infants, and some other small mementos to remember her by. Feeling nostalgic, Thor wandered the halls of Asgard, visiting the places where he and Loki used to play back when their relationship had been easy as breathing. He ended his stroll down memory lane at the door of Loki’s quarters, which hadn’t been touched since the last time his brother left them. Pulling open the door, light from the hallway barely penetrated more than a few feet into the gloomy darkness within. Entering, a thick layer of dust laid undisturbed on the furnishings abandoned by the former occupant. Several piles of books cluttered different surfaces while on the small private dining table a tea tray lay waiting for Loki to come back. The curtains would forever remain drawn until someone ordered for the room to be stripped and a team of maids opened them to clean. Then Loki’s belongings would be moved out to be stored in a corner of the palace to be forgotten about, fated to rot and the memory of who owned them lost to the annals of time.

 

Thor touched a stone on the wall and illuminated the enchanted candles in the chandeliers hung above. It took a moment for Thor’s eyes to adjust to going from inky darkness to the light the room had been thrown into. Once things came back into to focus, Thor realized he wasn’t the first person to come here since Loki’s death. Starting at the door, a pathway had been cut into the thick dust on the floor and went towards the wall lined with bookcases and cabinets. Following it, Thor wondered who’d visited this place; the most likely answer was his mother. She’d taken the loss the hardest out of Asgard, spending more and more time in isolation until consumed by her grief entirely. At his destination, Thor tried to discern which of the chests she’d opened, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the chest doors further down was opened slightly. Moving to it, he pulled it open fully and found the place Loki kept his prized sentimental items he pretended to not own. Hidden from view to maintain some pretence of aloofness in his public persona, it was the one area to show how deeply he did care for his family. Gaps in the dust revealed some objects had been removed sometime recently, and to where Thor had no idea. The only item remaining in its rightful place was something Thor had not seen in centuries and a gift from himself.

 

Forged on Nidavellir, the moment Thor first gazed upon the simple chain of alternating links of silver and gold, he knew he needed to get it for Loki. He had managed to barter a price with the dwarves of dragon scales acquired from the last expedition to Muspelheim he and the warriors three and Sif had gone on. Presenting it to Loki back on Asgard, his brother had adored the chain and placed it around his neck instantly, easing the shiftiness he’d displayed over the last few weeks. Wearing it non-stop, Loki refused to take it off until winter arrived; as had become usual to the royal palace, he’d vanished as soon as the first snows hit the outer lands of the realm, leaving behind the chain and a pining Thor in his wake. Of course Thor remembered it being his last winter away, and Loki had returned different with a look of terror deep in his eyes. Withdrawing into himself, Loki refused to spend time in either Thor or Frigga’s presence unless it also included the Allfather. Thor never saw him wear the chain again and watched as Loki became mean and bitter, wondering what could cause such a cataclysmic shift in his once sweet brother. Remembering the vision given by the tapestry, maybe Thor now knew. Picking up the chain, Thor put it on himself and turned around. Leaving the chambers for the ghosts of the past, Thor finished his tour of Asgard, saying goodbye to the only home he’d ever known and his innocence, its loss starting when he couldn’t save Loki and completely gone as soon as his mother hit the floor after being stabbed. Standing at the Bifrost, he took one last look at the realm eternal in all its beauty before allowing the rainbow light to return him to his duty as a protector of Midgard.

 

***

 

Outside the front door of their apartment Loki, put the last few items inside Sǫlrún's changing bag and shouldered it, and picking up their daughter in one hand and the pushchair in the other, they descended down the stairs into the commercial part of the building. Coming out into the staffroom, the only person occupying the area lay sprawled on a sofa reading one of the trashy gossip mags she loved to stock the waiting room with. Maddie looked up at the intrusion, grinned menacingly and bounced over to Loki, shoving the cover of the magazine into their face as they sorted out the pushchair. In massive orange block letters the headline read, _“Breaking News, Thor and Jane Foster call it quits,”_ and underneath the unflattering pictures of Thor moping at a bar and Dr Foster in no make up at the gym, the subtitle said, _“Rumours are flying it was incompatibility in the bedroom.”_ Loki stared at it indifferently, not overly interested in the lives of marginal celebrities, and asked Maddie, “I care about this why?”

 

“Come on, Lo, considering your name and this--,” Maddie gestured at the flyer advertising the shop covered in snakes and a version of Mjølnir, “--you care a little bit about Norse stuff and the actual god living a stone’s throw from here.”

“Not as much as you seem to believe. Anyway, I need to go. Frigga is meeting me at Central Park to take Sǫl to the zoo, and I don’t want to be late. I’m trusting you to hold fort until I come home.”

Maddie saluted Loki and replied, “You can count on me boss. Have fun, and please bring me back a souvenir.”

 

Turning their back on Maddie, Loki left the shop out the back entrance and started to walk towards their destination. Enjoying the warmth as the sun poked its way through the clouds, it seemed like everyone had the same idea of enjoying the nice weather, and the sidewalk was packed full of pedestrians. Lost in the shuffle, Loki let their mind ramble. Over the last few months, the blinding headache from so long ago kept coming back. At least the nausea barely bothered them anymore, yet flashes of images and sounds were becoming incessant. It was getting harder to pretend they weren’t delusions and just forgotten dreams from the night before, and their anxiety worsened as Loki’s suspicions of it being something serious grew. Reaching the park, Loki parked the pushchair out of the way and removed their phone from their bag. Checking the time, they saw it would be another half an hour before Frigga arrived, leaving Loki time to kill. Looking around, they spotted an ice cream cart just a bit further into the park and decided to go there. Waiting in line for a few minutes, when it was their turn Loki ordered two ice pops and with their purchase, they pushed Sǫlrún over towards some benches. Settling down, they unwrapped one of the treats and held it out for their daughter, Sǫlrún happily snatching it away and holding the actual ice cream instead of the stick. Opening theirs, Loki started to eat theirs and smiled as Sǫlrún got hers everywhere.

 

Thor stood in the middle of the bustle surrounding him in the park near Avengers Tower watching passers-by go about their business. He’d been chased out of the tower by his teammates for being a downer ever since he and Jane broke up, except they seemed to think Thor felt sadder about the separation than he really did. Honestly, he’d cared for Jane deeply; she was intelligent and funny, but they didn’t share this all consuming love Thor longed for. Loki gave him that, the fighting punctuated with long stretches of time where both of them would become inseparable, a cycle Thor never minded repeating, since any venom filled thing Loki said would be patched with a gesture showing he did love Thor, each loop as predictable as the sun and moon. On Midgard the taboo of loving your brother as more than family forced Thor to lie about the vastness of his feelings for Loki.

 

A pushchair going past broke him out of his melancholic thoughts as Thor caught a glimpse of the face pushing, one he knew far too well. She had the same long black hair and facial structure as Loki, dressed in a green vest top, gold leggings and black boots. Thor swore it could be him if not for seeing his brother disintegrate in his arms. On auto-pilot Thor started to follow the pushchair and watched on as she stopped at an ice cream vendor, ordered and took her purchase to a bench close by. Going to the cart himself, Thor asked for the first thing he saw on the menu and sat one bench away from her.

 

Observing the two, Thor was able to get a better look at the child sitting within the pushchair. Blonde hair sat atop her head in a wavy mess while her bright green eyes sparkled in the sunlight, and eating her ice cream by pulling bits off the stick, the girl managed to get most of it on her dress and face instead of her mouth. Thor was struck dumb as the girl grinned at her mother with a smile he recognized from his youth. It must be a coincidence right? Continuing to watch, the mother responded by laughing until her daughter tried to grab at her long hair with sticky fingers. Sighing, she held her own ice pop in her mouth while retrieving a bobble, and pulling her hair up into a ponytail, she tied it with the hair bobble and went back to her daughter. On her now uncovered upper left shoulder, the raised skin of a scar caught Thor’s eye, and the memory of inflicting one way too similar so many years ago broke him out of his inertia. Moving on auto-pilot, Thor found himself walking towards the mother and child, and unable to turn back, he stopped dead in front of them.

 

Falling out of his mouth without thinking, Thor bombarded the woman with questions, “Loki? How are you alive? Where have you been? Why didn’t you come find me?”

 

Loki looked up perplexed at the intruder speaking their name, not expecting to find the actual Avenger and god Thor talking like they knew each other. Ignoring him Loki put all their attention on Sǫlrún, trying to keep her calm as the stranger nearby started to spook her., until they felt a hand grasp their shoulder. Yanking it out from the grasp, Loki decided to move and text Frigga to meet them somewhere else. Pushing past the intruder Loki tried to put some distance between them and the crowd gathering to see what the commotion was. Making a beeline towards the busy sidewalk outside the park, Loki glanced back every so often to check if they’d lost their pursuer, only to find him always ten feet or so behind. Going into defence mode, Loki bent over like they needed to tie their boots and retrieved from their right boot the switchblade they kept for emergencies, and hiding it in their sleeve, Loki stood back up and waited. Thor came closer and restarted talking the gibberish from before, getting way too far into Loki’s personal space and attempting to grasp their neck, which is when instinct took over, and Loki flicked the knife out. Stabbing it sideways, Loki felt it hit its mark in the meat of the man’s side and the sick sensation of deja vu. Startled at the feeling they’d done this before, Loki stepped backwards and knocked the pushchair behind them forwards.

 

Turning around Loki stared on in horror as they watched the pushchair containing Sǫlrún roll towards traffic, and running after her, Loki didn’t notice as Thor followed suit. Out of nowhere a car came speeding out of a junction and straight into the path of where the pushchair was headed. It appeared undoubtedly a tragedy would occur, and there was no stopping it as Sǫlrún reached the road. At the moment of impact Loki screamed a primal parental roar, and a flare of green energy enveloped Sǫlrún and the pushchair as the car hit the energy field, the front of the vehicle crumpling on impact. Stunned and dazed, Loki wobbled over to the pushchair and tried to undo the straps, and after a moment of struggle, they managed to unclip Sǫlrún and pick her up. Stroking her back, Loki comforted their now wailing daughter and forgot everything from the last five minutes entirely, too engrossed in fear to put up a fight when Thor embraced them. Calling for Mjølnir, Thor grabbed it out of mid-air and let it fly away from the gathering crowd and towards Avengers Tower.

 

***

 

Huddled around a counter in the shared kitchen of the common room, Steve, Tony and Natasha kept side eyeing the woman and child sitting on a sofa not far away, their attention split between them and Thor tending the rapidly healing wound on his side while he smiled unnervingly, like Christmas had come early. None of them wanted to bring up the elephant currently sitting in the room, clutching her daughter close to her chest and obviously shaken up. When Thor had come barrelling in almost half an hour ago claiming she was Loki, both Clint and Bruce made themselves scarce as soon as they heard the name. Steve decided as team leader it was his responsibility to be the first to mention the current situation.

 

“Hey Thor, I don’t know what the culture is like on Asgard, but you can’t really kidnap random people off the street.”

Thor chuckled at Steve’s words and replied, “No, no you misunderstand. I’ve told you it’s Loki. He’s alive.”

“Point Break, I know you want to believe your brother is alive, but he died,” Tony replied, looking up at Thor after spending the last ten minutes banging his head repeatedly against the granite work surface, a headache forming at the thought of the media shitstorm abducting a parent and child would cause. Adding onto his sentence, “Like in front of us,” for emphasis.

Natasha remained stoic and observed the strangers intently before asking, “If this is Loki, how do you know? We all witnessed his body turn to ashes, and, well, he looked quite different.”

“Loki is an accomplished shape shifter. He could turn into anything as long as it was still inherently him. He never kept his gift a secret, but this particular form was something my mother and I knew,” Thor explained to his skeptical teammates, and bending over, he glanced over towards the other inhabitants of the room and pointed to the shoulder of the mother. Murmuring under his breath, Thor told the others, “Also the scar on the shoulder is something I’d know anywhere. I gave Loki one just like it back when we were young.”

 

Unknown to them, Loki had been pretending to still be in in shock while eavesdropping on the Avengers’ private conversation. From the second the green energy had poured out of them, an invisible wall inside their mind had begun to crack and crumble, and impossible images flashed in front of Loki’s eyes until reaching the story Thor was telling to the Avengers. Back when Loki had been very small, a delegation from Vanaheim came to Asgard to barter for extra protection against raiders in their outer lands. They brought along many gifts for the royal family to gain favour from Odin; Thor was presented a sword from Nidavellir magicked to be dulled for practice, though at a press of a gem on the hilt, it would sharpen instantly. Loki on the other hand had been bestowed a small dagger meant for self defence, the silver handle decorated intricately like a tree with emeralds as the apples. Loki had loved it the moment it was put in his hands and practised throwing it any spare time he had. Of course, as older brothers are wont to do, Thor wanted to look at the thing currently entrancing his little brother, waiting for when Loki left it unattended to bathe to make his move.

 

Taking it off the bedside table Loki had placed it on, Thor inspected the knife, and well balanced, it moved easily as he shifted it in his hands. Practising stabbing motions in the air, Thor didn’t hear the footsteps behind him until it was too late. Jumping on his back, Loki tried to wrestle the knife from his brother only to be flipped over. There was the dull sound of the blade hitting bone, but Loki felt nothing in his shoulder before hearing Thor gasp in distress. Looking down, he saw the handle of the knife sticking out of his skin while blood trickled down his arm, and silent tears ran down his face as the pain finally kicked in. Thor appeared to be ready to bolt to find their mother and face the consequences of what he’d done, but instead Loki stopped him. Pulling out the blade himself, Loki hissed in pain, and dropping the knife, he placed a hand on the puncture wound. Magic flowed out from his fingers and healed it. Yes, he was angry at Thor for touching his stuff, but not enough to have them both get in trouble for fighting. Back then Loki wasn’t very talented with healing magics, and the injury refused to close properly, allowing Frigga to discover it several days later.  She sent both of them to their rooms and denied them from leaving for over a week in punishment. At the end of his confinement, Frigga offered to correct the forming scar for Loki, but he rebuffed the suggestion as he quite liked having a warrior’s mark at such a young age.    
  


The wall separating their old life and new shattered into pieces, and Loki started to feel faint. Breath coming out ragged, Loki’s heart began to race while their fingers and toes started to tingle, and in a moment of lucidity, they placed Sǫlrún onto the floor and backed away from her. Waves of green energy emanated off of Loki as their body fluctuated and transformed, reverting to the form they used on Asgard. The furniture in their direct radius creaked and shattered into pieces, and as the magic hit the windows, spiderweb cracks appeared, and for a brief moment it looked like they would shatter, but luckily they held. Loki’s body began to jerk and convulse while the magic forced itself out of them, and falling onto the debris covered floor, Thor rushed over and tried to pass the field of green energy. Calling Loki’s name, a flare of blue light appeared from nowhere and fought to overtake the other magic, eventually smothering it and surrounding Loki in a blue sphere. 

 

The destruction stopped, and Loki’s body stilled. Thor turned around to try and locate the source only to find someone he thought long dead holding the screaming child and giving him a disapproving glare. Standing nonchalantly, wearing a dark blue maxi dress and matching knitted shawl, was Frigga. He was about to ask how she’d survived, but she walked up to him and gently hugged him before stepping back.  


 

“My dear sweet dumb child, when I said to find Loki, I meant be gentle and ease them into it. Not overload them the moment you found them. You could’ve seriously hurt not just Loki but your friends,” Frigga chided her dearly missed son and consoled her granddaughter. 

“Mother, how are you and Loki alive? I lost and mourned both of you,” Thor asked incredulously; the knowledge of his mother’s current status as living dumbfounding him.  

“I couldn’t stand idly by as your father became worse, and I decided to feign death during the convergence to escape here so I could keep an eye on Loki and their daughter. Asgard has nothing left for me. Loki can explain the hows and the whys of their survival themselves later.”

“So he’s been here all along?”

“Yes. Look, I’d love to stay and talk more, but I need to take Loki and Sǫlrún home. My magic won’t hold for much longer, and the after effects of gaining magic back so swiftly are dangerous.”

Frigga shuffled her handbag off her shoulder and pulled out a notebook and pen, and then she scribbled down something and held it out for Thor to take.

“This is Loki’s address. Come round tomorrow, and we can talk somewhere private, and please come alone.”

Frigga glanced at the Avengers as if to indicate who she meant.

 

Before Thor could reply, Frigga moved over to the prone form of Loki and touched their shoulder, the three of them vanishing in a blink of an eye and leaving Thor clutching the scrap of paper tightly and reeling. The revelation that the two people he’d loved the most weren’t dead did not fully set in for a good few minutes. The last two years and a bit had been a lie, and he hadn’t caused Loki’s death. The other Avengers glanced at each other, surprised at the turn Thor’s kidnapping had gone, and decided to leave Thor alone to come to terms with the events that had just happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay it's the return of Thor
> 
> also Happy Halloween I'm dressing as a witch this year


	6. Chapter 6

Tossing and turning, Loki spent the night stuck in a fugue state, their memories returning randomly and in a disorganized mess. Loki’s body struggled to adapt and cope with the magic freely flowing through their veins, causing a fever and, at odd moments, energy to explode wildly out of their body. Frigga took turns in tending to her sick child and caring for her granddaughter while worrying that she may lose Loki if they couldn’t gain control soon. The peak of Loki’s recollections of their former life came when they remembered the identity of Sǫlrún's father and how she was conceived. The memory started at the first time Loki had seen Thor in over two years of torture, the madness consuming them subsiding just enough to allow their brother past the walls built to keep themselves safe and letting him do something Loki vowed centuries prior would never happen again. Harshly kissing against the cold stone ground, Loki thought they’d devour each other, faintly recalling both of them clawing at the other’s clothes. It felt like Thor ripped the pale skin of their chest and cracked open their ribs, enabling Loki’s fragile speeding heart to experience the cold night breeze. The hunger for each other released, they gorged on their desire until their blood was sated. Breaking apart once finished, Loki hid the leftover residue of what they just did with a wave of their hand. Shame hung in the silence between Thor and Loki like a chasm as they tried to pretend the two of them had not overstepped unspoken boundaries. Thankfully moments later, Captain America and Iron Man interrupted their reunion and started a fight with Thor. A stolen tryst Loki had regretted at the time was now something they were happy occurred; it gave them the gift of Sǫlrún, and they wouldn’t trade her for the Nine Realms.

 

Waking up in a cold sweat, Loki opened their eyes a crack to see Frigga sitting on the edge of the bed tending to them, as well as hearing the tell tale noise of Sǫlrún in her bouncer on the floor. Gripping on their mother’s arm, Loki stopped her mid wiping their forehead. There were so many things they needed to tell Frigga that Loki had no idea where to start, knowing she’d taken care of them even when they couldn’t remember who she was. The first words to tumble out of Loki’s mouth were an apology, “I am so so sorry. I’ve hurt untold people including you. I don’t know how you can bear being in my presence.”

Frigga put down the damp washcloth and brought a hand to Loki’s face, and stroking their cheek, she tried to console them by saying, “Loki, Loki, calm down. There is no need to apologise to me. You are my youngest child, and I forgave your faults long ago. No matter the mistakes you’ve made, nothing can change that I’ll always love you.”

 

The floodgates inside Loki broke as tears streamed down their face, scared to speak aloud the thing they’d remembered in their fever fueled unconsciousness, “Even if I admitted that Thor is Sǫlrún's father?”

Frigga kissed Loki’s forehead and whispered into their hair, “Loki, it’s okay, I already knew. Remember I have a room full of potential futures, and I foresaw a chance you two could become something more as soon as Odin placed you in my arms. I’m overjoyed it worked out.”

Loki replied with a simple, “Really?”

“Yes, my dear Loki, the last two years proved to me you aren’t the bitter person of your youth. Seeing you change has been an honour.”  


 

The shrill sound of the doorbell cut short the emotional conversation between Frigga and Loki. Standing up, Frigga left the room to answer the door while Loki sat up against the headboard and retrieved Sǫlrún out of her bouncer. Holding her, Loki breathed in the comforting smell of her hair and waited for their mother to return. Five minutes later, she came back with Thor trailing behind her. Loki read the anxiousness in their brother’s body language as he stayed by the open door and watched Frigga as she cleaned up the piles of dirty laundry on the floor. Smiling sheepishly, Loki waved for Thor to enter their room properly, impatient to start the inevitable discussion about the things unspoken between them. Thor eventually passed the threshold into the bedroom and perched at the end of the bed, making sure to not accidentally sit on Loki’s toes. Frigga took Sǫlrún away from Loki with an excuse of her needing a nap and left to let the two of them talk. Hands now empty, Loki grabbed a spare pillow and hugged it tightly, creating a barrier between them and Thor. The awkwardness in the air thick enough to cut, Loki built up courage to speak only for Thor say things which struck them silent.   


 

“Loki, I’ve come to apologise. I realized far too late the wrongs I dealt you in the past and the damage caused by our father. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” 

The words tumbled rapidly out of Thor’s mouth as he gazed downwards at the floor. 

“I’m the one who needs to be forgiven. I vindictively schemed to take over the realm under your direct protection and in doing so, caused something reprehensible.”

“The invasion of New York is meaningless now, Loki. The last two years I mourned you, and to know you are alive is the biggest joy I’ve felt in that time. All I want to know is how you managed to survive. I held your body in my arms as it decayed and turned to dust.”

“You misunderstand. The mistake I caused was not the battle, Thor. I killed you. You didn’t escape the infernal contraption built to house their domesticated beast when it fell. It crashed, and I saw you take your last breaths. The worst part is I couldn’t save you. I was there as only a shade as you tried reach out for me.”

Every word was a struggle for Loki as they admitted to the shame which evaded them over the last two years.   


 

“Then how am I alive? Loki, what did you do,” Thor asked in an accusatory tone. 

“Remember those stories of people going to the Norns and changing their fate? Somehow I managed it. I begged them to resurrect you, and they told me their price, a life for a life. Yet they also said both of us would be needed in the future and offered me a different trade: my memories and immortality in exchange for you surviving the crash, and I accepted.”

“Loki, while I am so very grateful for your sacrifice, I’m upset you believed I could be happy in a world where you no longer existed. I lost myself when I lost you. I love you more than as my brother. You are my everything.”

Thor tried to imbue each word with the sincerity he felt.

 

“As wonderful as your sentiment is, Thor, there is a problem. My magic and memories have returned, which means the deal may be off. In forfeit, I may become human permanently. There is more than a good chance I’ll die long before you, Thor. Can you stay despite knowing that in less than a hundred years, I will be gone?”

“Yes, always, Loki. I promise.”

“You gave a similar promise to Jane Foster, and she is no longer by your side. I’d break if you left me like you did her.”

Loki threw the failed relationship Thor had forsaken Asgard and themselves for into their brother’s face, their greatest fear underlying it.

“Jane was different. I cared for her deeply and wanted her. Except she is not you. I need you, Loki. The world was grey when you weren't in it, and I refuse to go back. I love you, Loki, and all that entails.”

Thor held Loki’s hand in a way to show he meant every word.

 

Thor bridged the gap between them and embraced Loki, hoping his actions could speak louder than words. The contact set off another uncontrolled wave of magic to discharge out of Loki, all of which ended up being absorbed full force by Thor, who froze in place. Images of darkness bombarded Thor as well as the sensation heavy chains constricting his neck and choking the air out of his lungs, and his heart filled to the brim with despair when he sensed someone watching nearby. It was a terrifying force of a person who emanated pure undiluted hatred as they stood enjoying Thor’s pain, but before he could get a good look at who it was, he snapped out of the vision. 

 

Flat on his back, Thor stared at the blank ceiling and felt the soft mattress underneath him, and somewhere from far away a voice called to him. Focusing on it, he saw Loki bend over and grip the fabric of his shirt, his face white with worry. Placing a hand on Loki’s cheek, he asked, “Is that what Thanos did to you during your captivity?”

Loki laughed and replied, “Oh no, Thanos doesn’t like giving his prisoners that much space. Prefers to keep them in cages until they yield rather than out right torture. He dislikes being thought of as a monster.”

Backing away, Loki continued, “No, what you saw is a memory far older and a lot worse for me. I think it’s time you learn how rotten Odin and Asgard are and the truth of my last winter of freedom.”

 

***

 

The loss of Loki’s innocence began long before he even knew, starting with the first steps taken outside the palace without the Allfather’s permission. During one of his deep dives into the ancient archives of Asgard in search of books about old magic and the Norns, Loki found a book hidden inside a gap between two bookshelves. Pulling it out and dusting it off, he read the title,  _ The Art of Jotun Magic _ , and opening it up, Loki spent the afternoon learning the different practices Jotun mages could specialise in. A particular paragraph in a section about divination caught his eye when it made reference to a Frost Giant successfully contacting and making a pact with the Norns Loki had not read before. All other accounts he’d tracked down were vague and framed as stories with the names of the heroes changed by whoever was telling it. Flipping to the front, Loki tried to locate the name of the author only to find the pages torn, leaving behind the partial word of  _ Ang _ . Young and naive, Loki went to his mother to ask why someone would desecrate and hide a book, and learned from Frigga that many books penned by Frost Giants were destroyed after the last uprising of Jotunheim. Seeing the upset face of Loki, she’d pried the book out of his hands and saw the ripped title page, and examining the back, Frigga noticed it had been dated near the end of Borr’s reign and recognized the half name as the former court sorcerer Angrboða. Frigga told Loki the truth: the author may still be alive, but where, she had no idea.

 

This sparked Loki’s search for the author across the other realms, each one coming up empty until he turned his eyes to Asgard. Wandering deep into the wilds on the outskirts of Asgard, Loki found Angrboða deep in an isolated cave. Loki had looked up in awe at the tall figure of the Jotun, her skin a deep sapphire blue, and markings etched in gold covered her entirely. Thick gold jewellery adorned the horns peeking through the silk scarf she wore to cover her long black hair. After Loki talked her down from her righteous anger, the giant introduced herself as Angrboða, the last Jotun sorcerer left on Asgard. Of course the moment her identity had been confirmed, Loki began to bombard Angrboða with questions about the Norns and the Frost Giant referenced in her book. She’d laughed in his face and told Loki to not meddle in magic older than the realms, and that doing so was a recipe for catastrophe. She offered him instead the chance to become her apprentice and learn the magic Asgard had tried to stamp out, and a place to get away from the pressures of the palace. Loki accepted and escaped from Asgard the moment the leaves started to change colour, and returned only when newly sprouted green buds appeared on naked trees.    


 

In that carefree time under Angrboða’s tutelage, Loki learnt more than just the magic she promised. She showed him a way to live in balance with the darkness within. Loki matured and thrived like a winter flower blooming in the wild after growing in an endless artificial summer inside one of the many greenhouses in Asgard. No longer stunted and allowed space from the banality of being a prince, Loki gained some foresight in his place at the palace. As the earth needed winter, Asgard required chaos. For without the death delivered by the cold, rebirth could not happen when spring arrived, and the mischief Loki played pushed change inside the walls of the palace. The death of Asgard would happen not at the hands of reform but by stagnation caused by following tradition, an unthinkable prospect to Loki. He vowed no matter his future, he’d show Asgard the darkness to allow its citizens to truly enjoy the light. 

 

It still did not stop him from despising his place as second best to the golden son and crown prince Thor. Loki wanted recognition from his father and Asgard that he was appreciated. Angrboða became a kindred spirit as she’d been spurned by the court after years of service to the crown once King Borr died. A relic of the former Queen Bestla’s royal attendants, Angrboða had left Jotunheim the same time as her long dead mistress, becoming a spectacle to the lords and ladies due to her unusual appearance. The moment Odin took the throne, he purged the memory of his Jotun mother out of Asgard, wanting to pretend his blood was pure Aesir instead of only half. The remaining servants who’d cared for Bestla were left to defend themselves. Some returned home while Angrboða stayed. Believing her title as court sorcerer kept her safe, she’d tended to the new queen and ignored the court’s hateful remarks about her heritage. Once Jotunheim tried to gain its independence, Angrboða escaped to the wilds, knowing that to her homeworld, she was a traitor, and to Asgard a monster.

 

The cave and Angrboða became a place of respite to Loki, as well as eventually becoming home, somewhere he could be himself without worry of Odin finding him, and Angrboða supported him unconditionally. Loki honed his shape shifting skills until he could turn into a great many animals and other races, a feat difficult to most people with the same gift. He also learnt Angrboða’s chosen craft of enchanted tattooing, practising on dead animals for many years before moving onto the live villagers who knew of the Frost Giant and had accepted her as the best healer in the surrounding area. Every few years, Loki allowed his mentor to mark him with various things he’d designed, each one a reminder so he would not forget his place on Asgard. The first tattoo was the emerald green serpent wrapped around the hammer promised to Thor emblazoned on his left forearm, symbolizing his fear that one day, as Odin implied, he’d be his brother’s doom. The second was a snarling grey dire wolf whose muzzle constantly twitched and dripped crimson blood, taking up most of his chest and collar bone. It was how Loki truly felt in the halls of Asgard, a wolf in a pen of deer, forced to play act as prey as to not be left out in the cold and still yearning for the herd’s approval. Lastly, on Loki’s upper thigh was the representation of his double life, a blonde haired girl with her face bisected in two. On one side, her skin was blue as deep water with a single red eye, horn and fang, while on the other, pale and perfect as an Aesir. The Jotun half was how Loki felt with Angrboða, safe and free to explore his place inside the universe, while the Aesir side the lie Loki’s life at the palace had become. Stuck between two lives, Loki found himself unable to choose which one he cared for more. Here in the wilds, his emotions were no longer suppressed out of fear, the constant anxiety of Odin’s moods forcing Loki to fake at being happy. In spite of his father, the palace still offered something Loki couldn't imagine living without, the love of Thor and his mother irreplaceable inside his heart.

 

Everything crashed around Loki when he made his decision to leave the palace and forfeit his title as prince. Starting his preparations in the summer months before he was due to go in the winter, Loki spent as much time with Thor and Frigga as he could, intending to leave them with good memories instead of stepping out of their lives forever without a trace. Thor was the recipient of Loki’s final goodbye, finding the courage to admit to the feelings he’d repressed for years, confessing the truth of loving Thor in more than a brotherly way, never expecting to Thor to reciprocate by kissing him and ending up in bed together. The morning afterwards, Loki, in his chosen disguise known only to three people, crept out of Thor’s chambers and knocked straight into the Allfather. Face red from anger, Odin dragged Loki away by the scruff of his neck and took him into his private study. Dropping Loki onto the floor, Odin delivered his malicious ultimatum: Thor would be spared from punishment if he took the full blame, the penalty for Loki’s actions a season in isolation and to withdraw from both Frigga and Thor in case he sullied them further. Broken at being discovered, Loki nodded and accepted his fate. Kneeling at his father’s feet, Loki waited to be taken away and imprisoned, not realizing the Hel Odin had in store for him.

 

Deep down in the bowels of Asgard lay Loki’s prison cell, vastly different from the brightly lit ones used for the normal inmates. Empty of everything, only one torch near the door illuminated the cavernous room, and in the centre, barely outside the radius of light, Loki stood chained. Heavy iron manacles weighed his wrists and hands towards the floor while more encircled his chest and neck to keep him painfully upright. A collar made of enchanted gold was placed around Loki’s neck with metal bands emerging from its inner workings and covering his mouth. Forced into silence, Loki lived in total darkness and at the mercy of the Allfather’s whims. Days melted together into an unending twilight broken only by the odd visits from Odin to taunt his son, usually when something upset the king and, without an alternative, he took it out on Loki, the one person in the entirety of Asgard unable to talk back or run away. The torture he inflicted depended on his rapidly fluctuating moods and was impossible for the weakened Loki to predict. Some days he could almost be kind and talk of the beauty of the surface blocked from Loki, while others, Odin would pull on the chains holding him up, forcing Loki to go on tiptoes to try and alleviate the pressure building around his neck and chest. That winter, Loki truly learnt his place in the Nine Realms as a punching bag for the king or a tool to be used for the greatness of Asgard and then discarded. Starved of light and hope, Loki survived the only way he could: by incorporating the black void around him and becoming a shadow of his former self.

 

After what seemed like a lifetime, the winter ended, and Loki was released from his shadowy pit of isolation. Feeling the sunshine on his face for the first time in forever as he hit the surface, Loki noticed in the stark light of day the dark purple bruises marking his wrists. Concealing himself using his long suppressed magic, Loki silently trudged towards the beckoning safety of his chambers, entering to find them as clean as the day he’d left. Ignoring the main room, he moved straight into his dressing room and locked the door behind him. Standing on the raised platform in front of the floor length mirror, he stripped off his tattered and soiled clothing, and Loki gazed at his naked form, taking in the damage. His usually lithe body had withered away, leaving him thin enough to allow his ribs and other bones to poke out harshly. Loki’s unnaturally pale skin was dotted with new and fading bruises, the worst ones concentrated at his mouth and throat. Ashamed at the unsightly wreck he’d turned into, Loki expected to cry, only to realize in disgust there was nothing left inside him other than numbness, the isolation robbing him of any chance at processing the aftermath in a somewhat healthy way. Pulling open a drawer, Loki redressed himself in clean nightwear and retreated back into his main chambers. Crawling into bed, he dragged the duvet over his head and fell asleep in the now comforting darkness. Staying inside his bed for the next week, Loki ignored the door whenever anyone knocked, unable to face either his mother or Thor. Protecting them from the ordeal he just faced, Loki knew they were better off without the burden of his company.   


 

Several weeks later, once he’d gathered some strength, Loki snuck out of the palace to visit his mentor, wanting to both apologise to her for never turning up and to terminate his apprenticeship. The trip to Angrboða’s cave was an arduous one in Loki’s weakened state, each step a struggle. It took him several more hours than it should to arrive. The sun was peeking over the mountain as he entered the cave to find his worst nightmare. Angrboða sat stiffly over her dining table with a spear piercing her side and dark brown dried blood stained the rocky floor. Moving closer, Loki could feel the spell stopping her body from decaying, but the rotten food in front of her on the table showed she’d been dead for months. Without a doubt, his father was behind her murder, enacting his final revenge and leaving Loki a clear warning. If he dared to step a toe out of line, someone else he cared for would end up hurt or worse, dead. Devastated, Loki pulled the spear out of his mentor’s body and cleaned the blood off of her with water from a barrel. Dragging Angrboða’s corpse slowly across the floor, Loki placed her on the bed tucked inside a corner, and finally, he crossed her arms across her chest and turned away. Detached from reality, Loki dug into the many small chests dotted around the cave, and pulled out an old leather pouch containing Angrboða’s prized needles, the ones she’d tattooed royalty with in her heyday. Setting them down on the newly vacated table, Loki found a pot of still wet ink hidden in an alcove and started to brand himself with a reminder of his place inside Asgard. The crude outline of an eight legged horse took shape on Loki’s right forearm, Odin’s prized war steed Sleipnir and a mighty beast who was forced to bow to the glory of the Allfather. Both of their freedoms sacrificed, Loki and Sleipnir had become tools to be used to keep the Nine Realms at peace. 

 

Loki’s bright future cut short, he never left the palace without an escort again and stopped believing he’d ever earn a happy ending.

 

Anger bloomed deep inside Thor’s gut at Loki’s revelation, remembering the events leading up to and after that winter so very well. Loki fleeing his bed the morning afterwards had been an expected reaction to Thor; they both needed time to process the impulsiveness of their actions. He knew in his heart, Loki would return and they’d work it out. A few days later, Odin summoned Thor and, in the guise of readying him to receive Mjølnir, set him training. The tasks given to him were unrelenting in their difficulty as Thor sparred with either people ten times stronger than him, or taking on several of Asgard’s best at once. As the days turned into weeks, the training intensified until his body, without rest, was unable to heal itself. Broken bones and dark purple bruises the new normal, Thor’s spare moments were spent with the healers. At night, exhausted and beaten down in his chambers, Thor removed the stiff heavy armor the Allfather forced him to wear and wiped himself down with a rough damp cloth. Once finished, he moved to the balcony he shared with Loki’s chambers and gazed up at the stars, finding solace that somewhere Loki stood underneath the same ones. The thought strengthened Thor’s resolve to endure the near tortuous training. 

 

To learn Loki had been below him inside a cell the entire time outraged Thor. Odin lied and punished both his children for a mistake neither regretted. Loki’s change after returning now made sense to Thor. How his brother’s antics were no longer light hearted fun and turned into pure vitriol, an obvious way Loki could rebel against Odin without exposing the secret between them.   


 

Summoning Mjølnir from the coat hooks from the other room, Thor stood up, ready to find somewhere quiet to call Heimdall and return to Asgard. The rage that had built up inside over the last few years boiling over at knowing what Odin had put Loki through. Thoughts of confronting the Allfather clouded Thor’s mind, stopping only when he noticed Loki plastered flat against the headboard, expression filled with a mixture of fear and disgust. Before he could say anything, Loki got up and roughly pushed past Thor and left the room. Following behind into the hallway, Thor found himself in front of a mirror and realized why Loki had run without saying a word. His face a storm of hatred and aggression, Thor saw Odin in his features, something both he and Loki grew up fearing. Instantly calming down, he placed his hammer on the floor and rushed towards the doorway Loki had gone through. Entering, Thor discovered Loki standing facing a window with their daughter in their arms, rocking her back and forth while humming a nostalgic lullaby to her. Turning around, Loki’s face went from relatively serene to irritated, and the only reason they hadn’t started to yell at Thor like they would normally was the child in their presence

 

“Thor, I know you want to confront Odin for all he has done, but it is a fool’s errand. You would die, and who is left to protect Mother? Or me? Or our daughter? Sǫlrún is the rightful heir to the throne, and our father will hate her just for who her parents are.”

It took a second for Thor to process the words spoken by Loki, then realization dawned on his face. The child Loki had borne during their two years on Midgard belonged to him. The weight of jealousy he did not know he’d been carrying lifted off his chest. Two words slipped from his mouth as Thor sought confirmation, “Our daughter?”

“Yes, our daughter. Despite me losing my memories, I doubt you forgot about the night before my ill fated invasion,” Loki snarkily replied.   


 

Thor stepped forward and pulled both Loki and their daughter into a bone crushing hug, ecstatic at learning he was a father. Smattering kisses all over Loki’s face, Thor then moved position slightly to get a better look at his daughter. Marvelling at her tiny hands as she grabbed at his face and giggled, placing a kiss on her forehead, Thor looked back at Loki and took in the soft expression of love on his brother’s features. The well known strain of centuries unravelled between Thor and Loki, allowing themselves to just be together without some kind of conflict miring their relationship. Behind them, they failed to notice the clock hanging on the nursery wall stop as the Nine Realms halted their movement. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp when I originally plotted this Odin wasn't that bad then it ran away with me and well this happened.


	7. Chapter 7

The Norns watched over the scene which had taken over two years in the making, satisfied their side of the deal had been fulfilled. Loki’s time alone walking down a path closed to them so many years before had allowed them to thrive, giving Loki a chance to understand who they were without the context of Asgard and princedom: a person still haunted by a past unchanged yet stronger for having the distance to figure out their place inside the Nine Realms and a calling not based around trying to prove their worth to a cold father. They were allowed to just be Loki and not the God of Mischief or a prince of Asgard or even Thor’s brother. They’d become a singular entity for the first time in their life, and despite it feeling like an eternal twilight, Loki enjoyed the darkness surrounding them, until they became two as they bore a child of pure sunlight and the world brightened a little more. Now with all their memories, Loki realized how devoid of daylight their life was without Thor, an integral puzzle piece missing in their heart where their brother fit in perfectly. Of course there were loose ends the Norns needed to tie since the barrier separating Loki’s old life and new shattering meant now they’d have questions which required answering.

 

Lifting the family carefully, Skuld pulled them away from the warm apartment on Midgard and settled the trio down in front of the well. The newly reunited family unfroze, and dazed, it took a few moments for Loki to recognize their surroundings. Shielding Sǫlrún with their body, Loki searched the starry void around them for the Norns. Thor on the other hand foolishly wandered to the edge of the plateau, foot kicking pebbles over the side while Thor gazed at the abyss below. Staring as distant stars blinked in and out of existence and comets streaked past, it reminded him of standing beside Heimdall at the Bifrost and watching the other realms. Engrossed in the beauty of the view, Thor failed to notice the star filled sky move and change shape. Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld emerged out of the infinite night and bent over to welcome their guests. Thor startled at the figures who’d appeared from nothing and scuttled backwards, stopping in front of Loki and Sǫlrún. As things settled and stilled, the three Norns started to speak as one.

 

“Welcome Thor Odinson and Loki Laufeyson. It’s a pleasure to see both of you here.”

 

Thor instantly realized who the beings in front of him were and his current location. Understanding the power even one of these figures held in their grasp, Thor knew protecting Loki and their daughter was the most important thing. He was more than thankful the Norns had brokered and accepted an agreement with Loki, but Thor’s reckless actions on Midgard caused a breach in contract and threw the future into doubt. Kneeling on the ground before the Norns, Thor bent his head and begged, “Old ones, I am forever indebted to you for hearing my brother’s call and saving my life. I beg for one last favour. Loki forfeited their former life and immortality without my knowledge, and I foolishly meddled with the deal. I ask you to please return all they lost in exchange for my resurrected life. I cannot bear the thought of Loki dying long before our daughter ages into adulthood.”

The Norns answered in chorus, “There is no need to sacrifice yourself, Odinson, our bargain with Loki was fulfilled over a year ago and everything we took was returned. Loki is the one who chose to remain mortal until recently.”

Loki walked forwards and nudged Thor out of the way, firmly asking the question now baffling them, “How? If my memories and Godhood weren’t the true price, what was?”

The Norns honestly stated, “Sǫlrún. A life for a life, as agreed upon.”

 

The words rang in Loki’s ears, and as panic began to overtake them, they placed Sǫlrún on their back, using magic to keep her from slipping off. Terrified the Norns would snatch her away at any moment, Loki braced themselves for an unwinnable battle. Of course their memories weren’t a good enough price; a freshly born soul was a far more tempting option. Thor read the anxiety of Loki’s expression and stepped up next to them. Putting an arm around their shoulders, Thor cautioned the Norns.

 

“I hope you don’t expect to take our daughter away from us. I won’t allow the child I only learnt about today to be stolen from her parents for a deal I wasn’t privy to. I offer again my life if you let Loki and Sǫlrún leave here.”

Skuld moved closer to the platform and positioned herself to be at eye level with Thor and Loki.

“Oh no, you misunderstand us, Odinson. Removing her from your care is not what we meant. She is more than safe to live her life in peace,” the youngest Norn reassured the God of Thunder as her eyes glittered in excitement.

“Our intention is in the scheme of fate and the Nine Realms. She is a brand new thread, her birth a thing we did not foresee.” Verðandi settled next to her sister and smiled at Sǫlrún, letting one of tendrils to float over the princess’s head to entertain her.

Urðr added, “Her existence is an intriguing thing to us. From the moment we opened our eyes in this universe, we’ve known how it will end. Every king, hero, villain and war has been certain to us for as long as our memories stretch, and your daughter has changed the realms’ destiny. There are parts of the future we no longer know, and we thank her for breaking us out of the inevitability of fate.”

 

The three Norns watched as Thor and Loki’s faces changed several times as they tried to grasp the knowledge that their ill fated encounter over two years ago had irreversibly altered the future of the universe. When Loki held Sǫlrún for the first time, they did not realize in their arms wasn’t just a new life; she signified a tapestry of a brand new woven fate, a simple change shifting the course of the river of destiny to an unknown destination. Thor and Loki wondered how things would’ve originally gone if neither had given into the desire of that night, how different they’d be, and if Thor’s untimely death would have occurred. Sǫlrún symbolized both a life neither of them believed possible and a harbinger of rebirth for the entire universe.

 

In the history of their vigil here at Yggdrasil’s well, only one or two people had gone through the revelation the two Gods were currently still comprehending. Sympathising with their plight, the Norns together proposed, “If you are curious about what used to be fated for both of you, we could show you the past course and your current one?”

 

Thor and Loki nodded almost in unison, both interested at the difference between the two futures. Star filled tendrils pulled golden light from out of the well, and the Norns shaped it into a perfect, flat disc a few inches above the hole. Opaque at first, the liquid like energy shimmered and shifted, becoming a light gold mirror reflecting the stars above. Loki and Thor gazed into its surface as it the night sky dissolved, transforming into an image of a fresco in the same vein as the ones painted on the dome above Odin’s throne. The ceiling was a different shape and made from stone instead of gold, and the mural displayed Thor alone on a wooden throne shaped like a tree, the stone arches letting in the moonlight behind him contrasting the gold walls of the throne room on Asgard. Thor himself looked older, his beard and hair peppered with white, and his right eye was covered with an eyepatch similar to the one their father wore. Expression stony, he gazed not at the viewer but at the matching throne next to him, empty of a queen. Instead, the seat held a golden horned helmet. At some point in this future, this Thor had lost his Loki, and instead of continuing the bloodline by marrying someone, he chose to end the line of kings with himself. Lost without Loki, he kept his duty as king of Asgard and shouldered the weight of the Nine Realms alone.

 

The image melted and reformed to reveal a new painting of the same throne room as before though entirely different. The sun shone through the arches behind the matching thrones, and this time, instead of his helmet, Loki now sat beside Thor. Still wearing the eyepatch, Thor’s sombre expression had turned into one filled with happiness, and despite the wrinkles on his face and the white in his hair and beard, any resemblance to Odin was washed away by years of living in joy. Loki’s hair remained pitch black in defiance of time, yet age had crept up on them too, the corners of their eyes and mouth creased from a life spent laughing. Standing in between the thrones were three figures linking arms; the tallest Loki knew was an older Sǫlrún. Her golden wavy hair long past her waist billowed behind her, adorned with flowers, and a pair of horns jutted out of her forehead and curled upwards. Sǫlrún's eyes were as red as rubies, and she wore a long airy sky blue dress embellished with silver and gold, and through her smile, pointed canines were visible. On her right was a boy several years younger than her with ink black hair and blue eyes, his face and build taking after Thor though the mischief in his eyes made it apparent he was their yet unborn son. Armor forged in both gold and silver, his cape was the colour of the full moon, and under his arm he held a helmet which bore the same wings as Thor’s old dress armor. Clutching Sǫlrún's left arm was a youth of indistinct gender and ocean blue skin with eyes like ice chips, and their braided silver hair glowed in the sunlight. They wore a set of dark blue robes covered in hundreds of precious stones glittering like stars, and on their belt hung the dagger Loki was given by the Vanir. A perfect mix of both Thor and Loki, it foretold another child in their shared future. Unlike the frescoes on Asgard, this hadn’t been commissioned to show the power of the Allfather and the royal family. Instead, it was a portrait to record the happiness of this king and his family, a future that shone so much brighter than the one Loki always expected.

 

Overjoyed at learning of the new future waiting for them, Thor enveloped Loki and Sǫlrún into a bear hug which lifted the former off their feet. Pressing their foreheads together, they remained in harmonious silence as the stars above twinkled and meteors flew past, and Sǫlrún gurgled underneath their chins as she grabbed at her parents’ faces with drool covered hands. Setting Loki down very carefully, Thor placed a now free hand against Loki’s cheek and blurted out, “We’re safe. Our fate together has been assured. We should return to Asgard to have Sǫlrún formally announced, and then no one can harm her.”

“Return to Asgard? You’re more insane than I am. You know the torture Odin put me through, and you expect him to receive Sǫlrún with open arms? Our relationship alone will cause a scandal in all the realms without adding our daughter into the mix. The status we hold as princes, especially mine, is not enough to ensure her or our protection,” Loki snarled in reply to Thor’s suicidal suggestion.

 

Taking Sǫlrún to Asgard to guarantee her place in succession while their relationship remained as brothers was a disaster waiting to happen. Odin hated shame brought on the family more than anything and would do anything to halt a scandal. He’d banished Thor to Earth for the minor slight of embarrassing Asgard in front of Jotunheim and taken Loki’s freedom for besmirching his brother’s honour by lying together. At best, the Allfather would execute Loki and raise Sǫlrún without any memory or trace of her mother, and at worst, he’d kill both parent and child. Afterwards, he’d force Thor into a political marriage to someone much more worthy to bear the next heir to the throne. Either way, Loki died, and the future shown to them would become nothing but a broken dream.

 

The Norns understood Loki’s fears. The path of fate was not a straight line; it curved and twisted. Many things could happen between the present and the future seen in the well. Wishing more than anything to keep the two Gods on track to their jubilant destiny, the Norns chimed in with a suggestion, “We know the conundrum both of you face, and we can offer a way to make Loki and Sǫlrún untouchable to the Allfather. Ancient custom dictates in the old texts of Asgard any union blessed by the Norns cannot be gone against without dire consequences.”

 

The custom the Norns had referenced was older than Asgard and only written down centuries after the last known occurrence. Loki had read those texts not knowing it contained the spell they were searching for all those years ago. The one Loki casted after Thor’s death was not the original spell meant to contact the Norns; instead it was a derivative of an earlier ritual intended to bond a couple for eternity. A type of marriage contract, the ingredients were a kiss filled with undying love and the resolve to forever stay by someone’s side. Once at the bottom of Yggdrasil’s roots, the Norns would oversee the couple’s ceremony and bind the two’s souls together, and forever linked, they’d remain as one even in death. 

 

Loki turned to Thor and asked, “This is more permanent than a marriage on Asgard. It will last even after death. Can you handle that?”

Thor kissed Loki’s forehead and whispered into their hair, “I’ve dreamt about marrying you ever since our first night together. There is nothing I want more than to make sure it's forever.”

Loki separated away from Thor and faced the Norns to give their answer, “We accept, Old Ones. Can I ask one favour? May our Mother be summoned to watch as we take our vows?”

 

The Norns nodded as they let great tendrils of the star filled smoke their bodies were constructed from vanish into the universe. After several moments, the tentacles returned holding the Allmother delicately in their collective grasp and depositing her onto the ground next to Thor and Loki. Frigga rushed to her children and hugged them tightly, and the brief reunion over, Thor and Loki briefly explained the events prior to her arrival. Delighted at hearing her children were marrying, Frigga relieved Loki of Sǫlrún and moved to the side, giving Thor and Loki space to kneel and face each other at the lip of fate’s well. Loki stretched out their left hand and offered it to Thor, who mirrored the gesture, and together they grasped each other’s forearm tight. They watched as golden threads snaked out of the well and wound snugly around their linked hands.

 

Somewhere from over head, with her voice like the dead and broken planets floating in the cosmos, Urðr asked Thor and Loki, “Do you vow in front of the Nine Realms and Yggdrasil itself to love each other until the moon sets on your lives and beyond?”

As one, the two replied, “I vow,” and as the words left their mouths, the golden threads binding them together shifted to a blue as dark as the night sky on Asgard.

 

Verðandi was the second to ask her question, her voice reminiscent of dying stars and warm sunshine. “Do you vow in front of the Nine Realms and Yggdrasil itself to be each other's sun, even through the misfortune and darkness of a life shared together?”

“I vow.”

The threads changed hue a second time, turning from dark blue to a white as pale as the moon. 

 

Sounding like the birth of the stars and universe, Skuld lastly asked her question, “Do you vow in front of the Nine Realms and Yggdrasil itself to follow the stars inside each other created by your love to wherever the future leads you?”

“I vow.”

Final words spoken, Thor and Loki’s restraints adjusted to sky blue and drifted upwards into aether, becoming lost in Yggdrasil’s roots.

 

  
Left behind on each other’s arm was the scar like imprint of the ethereal binding, an eternal reminder of the promise they’d just made in front of the universe. Standing up first, Thor helped Loki off the ground and dragged them into an embrace, and the kiss they shared in that moment felt like home and an end to a long painful journey for both of them, the hundreds of years where neither truly belonged to each other melting away as the sounds of cracking over head began. Yggdrasil’s boughs started to sway and move, signalling the end of Loki and Thor’s time with the Norns. Both of them smiled, knowing without a doubt the future of their daughter and themselves was assured, and nothing in the Nine Realms could tear the two apart.

 

Art by [happinessfordeeppeople](http://happinessfordeeppeople.tumblr.com/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost at the end, just an epilogue to go and it's done  
>  small notes are I did name the other children Of Loki and Thor and their son is Mana while the last kid is Elin. I don't want to clutter up any more space with info about them since its not important to the story and just little extras I thought of just to flesh out the characters to myself.


	8. Epilogue

The morning afterwards, back at Loki’s apartment, Thor sluggishly drifted out the state of dreaming. The light streaming through the crack between the curtains forced him to screw his eyes shut in a vain attempt to block it out. He tried to hold onto the fantasy his dreams had concocted to ease him of guilt over Loki’s death, wanting to stay in the delusion that Loki was alive and they’d had a daughter. It took several moments for Thor to register the fact that the weight on his chest wasn’t metaphorical, and that someone else shared the bed with him.

 

Opening his eyes, the light blinded Thor for a second before his vision adjusted, and he looked down. Loki’s face was silhouetted perfectly in the dawn light, giving them an ethereal and otherworldly glow. Hair fanned out on the pillow behind in a wavy mess, Loki’s head rested on Thor’s chest, heavily snoring, a puddle of drool leading from their mouth collected on Thor’s bare skin, the pain etched so deeply on Loki’s face from the years of suffering erased by the serenity of a night’s worth of unbroken sleep. To now know Loki had been a stone's throw away from Avengers Tower and his comrades made Thor wonder how they’d fared in the two years without their memories. Imagining Loki free of resentment and trauma, carving a place on Midgard, brought immeasurable joy to Thor as well as a pang of jealousy for the people who’d watched them change. Loki had probably had the same feelings during Thor’s own banishment as he’d grown with the help of Jane, Darcy and Erik, as well as the Avengers. As children, they’d always been Thor and Loki, inseparable until Thor became old enough to train to fight and met the Warriors Three and Sif. Even when the distance widened as they grew older, Thor still felt protective over Loki and secretly wanted them more than as a brother, a shame he hid deeply, believing what he desired was impossible. Yet here the both of them were, lying in a bedroom slowly filling with light after being married by beings older than Yggdrasil.

 

Kissing the top of Loki’s head, Thor carefully untangled and slid them off his chest and onto the pillow next to them. Loki stirred for a moment before mumbling in their sleep and turning over, their rest unbroken by the loss of their bedmate. Sitting up, Thor swung his legs onto the floor and began to fumble around to find his clothes in the dim room. Locating his jeans crumpled into a ball near his feet and shuffling them on, he checked the pockets and removed the gold and silver chain he’d taken from Loki’s chambers. He debated if he should leave it on Loki’s bedside table to find before deciding to pocket it once again and give it back later. Retrieving his shirt off one of the posts at the foot of the bed, Thor pulled it on and left it unbuttoned. Padding to the door, Thor opened it just wide enough for him to slip through and closed it quietly behind him. Standing in the hallway, Thor found himself at a loss for what to do next; he felt like an intruder in Loki’s home, which caused a mild current of anxiety to run through him. Walking down the corridor, Thor stopped outside of Sǫlrún's room, and pushing the door open a crack, he stayed at the threshold and stared in. The walls painted a sky blue and decorated with cloud decals, the nursery reminded Thor of flying through the sky with Mjølnir, and in one corner, Frigga sat swaying back and forth on a white rocking chair. A pair of reading glasses perched on her nose, Frigga’s attention was focused on the needles in her hands, counting under her breath as she knitted. Watching from her wooden cot, Sǫlrún held both of her feet in her hands as she copied her grandmother’s rocking motion, but she stopped as she saw the door open and Thor entered. Letting go of her feet, Sǫlrún raised her arms in the universal language of children that she wanted to be picked up. Unsure what to do, Thor stopped in his tracks and stood awkwardly before Frigga looked up from her work.

 

“She’s hungry, Thor. Be a dear and feed her. Everything is in the fridge and labelled,” Frigga quietly asked as her the clacking of her needles started again.

 

Thor nodded and lifted Sǫlrún out of her crib, holding her stiffly. He was forced to get a better grip when she began to wriggle. Leaving Frigga to her knitting, Thor exited the nursery and walked in the direction of the open living area he’d only gotten a brief glimpse of yesterday. As he came in, Thor finally had time to take in the sight of the place Loki had made home, smirking at the mess of toys strew over every available surface and the other odd assortment of items needed for raising a small child dotted around. The window sills were lined with numerous overflowing plants of varying species, and the stag with fanged teeth gazed over its dominion. Moving to the kitchen space, Thor opened the fridge and inspected the contents until discovering the jar labelled with Sǫlrún's name hiding behind a tub of yogurt, and taking it out, he nudged the door closed with his elbow. Unscrewing the lid one handed, Thor found a clean rubber teaspoon on the draining board and went to sit at the small dining table. Placing Sǫlrún on the surface in front of him, Thor held onto her back with one hand and fed her with the other. Spooning the lumpy porridge into her mouth, Thor chuckled when she dribbled some down her chin.

 

Frigga entered five minutes later and shook her head while smiling as she watched her son and granddaughter bond. She motioned for Thor to hand her Sǫlrún and took her out of his arms, placing her in the high chair, and Frigga strapped her in place and left Thor to continue to feed her. Filling the kettle with water, she put it back on its dock and turned it on, and a loud mew at her feet forced Frigga to turn around and sigh. Opening a cupboard, she took down a bag of dry cat food and poured some in a dish on the counter, and a large golden cat jumped onto the surface and began to gorge itself on food. Once finished, the cat wandered over to the dining table and sat, watching Sǫlrún eat. Intrigued at the animal, Thor put down the rubber spoon and felt around for the tag on the cat’s collar before snickering as he read his own name. The fact Loki remembered him somehow brought peace to Thor’s heart. Fiddling with the straps keeping Sǫlrún in, Thor heaved her out of the contraption after figuring out how it worked, and holding his daughter, he went to talk to Frigga to learn more about Loki’s life over the last two years.

 

***

 

Loki stood in front of the mirror hanging on their bedroom wall and stared at their reflection, trying to reconcile the two identities inside their mind. A few days ago they’d just been a semi successful tattoo artist attempting to juggle between their work and their infant daughter, but now Loki could remember the person they used to be: a bitter prince from a distant planet deep in space whose anger ruled them, someone who’d caused the death of the person they loved more than the universe and sacrificed everything to save. They had done unspeakable things to the city they called home, and soon enough, Loki would have to face the consequences of their actions over two years ago. The Avengers who they provoked during the whole fiasco would learn about Thor and Loki’s history and judge both their teammate and former foe. Dread settled in Loki’s stomach as they feared Thor would leave once it all came out, despite the vow made in front of the Norns. Loki had been abandoned before by their brother in favour of his friends. The good side of the situation was the knowledge that the distance between them and the pain and the anger Odin had instilled in the last few hundred years had done Loki good. The smell of food wafted through the crack of the bottom of the door and broke Loki out of their thoughts, their stomach remembering they’d not eaten since last night. Grabbing the emerald green dressing gown draped over the closet door, Loki pulled it on and wandered into the living area.

 

Loki leant against the door frame leading into the living space and cracked a smile at the scene in front of them. Laid flat on the hardwood floor, Thor held Sǫlrún's middle with both of his hands, and periodically he’d lift the small girl in the air causing her to laugh. Alone in the kitchen, Frigga stood in front of the stove stirring a steaming pot of stew while regularly checking the bubbling pot of peeled potatoes in another pan. Every so often she’d shift her gaze and watch Thor and his daughter playing with a soft smile. Spotting Loki, Frigga reached over to press the button on the kettle and placed a mug next to it. Loki walked past Thor and Sǫlrún to join Frigga in the kitchen, and removing the lid of a metal box marked _tea,_ Loki dropped a bag into the cup and poured boiling water over it. Waiting for it to brew, Loki turned around and leant their back against the counter as Frigga opened an over head cabinet to retrieve three bowls. Returning to attend to their tea, Loki poured in a splash of milk and accepted a soft kiss on their cheek as Frigga went to lay the table. Moving into the living room, Loki sat down on the monstrous sofa and put their cup onto a side table. When Thor noticed their appearance, he got on to his knees and placed Sǫlrún into the playpen, who huffed in irritation. Sitting down next to Loki, Thor nuzzled up to them and slotted an arm around their waist, a soppy expression plastered on his face as he kissed their neck. Taking a sip of tea, Loki heard Thor say something they were not expecting, and by sheer luck, boiling hot liquid didn’t end up on their laps.

 

“So I found out you named your cat after me,” Thor said bluntly, adding, “Did you miss me that much?” in a tone meant to tease.

Straight faced, Loki replied, “No, pure coincidence. He actually got the name from being a rather flatulent animal.” Loki stopped as they noticed the black hunk of hair braided into Thor’s blond hair, alarmed to realize it was some of their hair.

 

“Is that my hair? The question now, Thor, is if you missed me enough to use what seems like actual hair from my dead body in your braid.”

Thor blushed and looked down in embarrassment at being caught, quietly answering, “I admit, in my grief I may have raided your store of spare hair you used for magic.”

 

Rage bubbling under the surface, Loki in said in a strained voice, “You went into my rooms and rummaged in my personal possessions. Just be glad I’m not throwing this tea in your face. I have private things in there no one needs to see.”

“You mean like this?” Thor pulled out from the recesses of his pocket the chain stolen from Loki’s chambers and held it just out of reach. Loki put down their drink and tried to snatch it away, only to have Thor lift it above their head. Uncaring at how it looked, Loki wrestled to yank Thor’s arm, and it eventually devolved into the two of them tussling over the item until Frigga walked out of the kitchen.

 

Sighing at her children in defeat, she announced, “Lunch is ready,” before removing Sǫlrún from the playpen and settling her granddaughter back into the high chair and taking a seat next to her.

Standing up from the sofa Thor dropped the necklace into Loki’s hand before taking ahold of it and led them over to the small dining table, only letting go to pull out a chair for his new spouse. Loki sat down, and Thor pushed the chair in and took the last spare space. Frigga ladled three heaping portions of stew from a ceramic serving dish into the pottery bowls in front of the adults and gave Sǫlrún a smaller helping in her Avengers plastic bowl.  
  
“I’m afraid it’s nothing like the wedding feast you’d get on Asgard, but I hope this is enough to celebrate the occasion,” Frigga lamented.  
  
Thor clasped one of her hands while Loki took the other and answered enthusiastically, “This is better than anything any royal feast on Asgard because you made it out of unconditional love for us.”

 

Everyone collectively dug into the food except for Loki, who paused, opening their hand to stare at the gold and silver chain glinting in the sunlight. The battle to survive Loki unknowingly spent their youth fighting had finally come to an end, the time without those memories allowing them to move past the grief of understanding they would never have a decent relationship with Odin or a childhood to look fondly on. The only constant in those turbulent years had always been Thor, sweet, beautiful, golden Thor, who remained a fixed sun to Loki’s many shifting moon throughout the tempestuous cycle of their relationship. At this moment of peace, Thor and Loki stood in the eye of the storm before Thor returned to the Avengers; tomorrow the dark grey clouds in the horizon would arrive and with it bring rain.

 

Loki knew they needed to answer for their crimes against Midgard, yet they still did not regret their actions fully. The chaos of the invasion had given birth to a new age of heroes and allowed Midgard to grow further into a realm worthy of Thor’s protection. Loki put the chain around their neck and joined in on eating, savouring the company of the people they loved most. Tomorrow a new battle in the war of Loki’s life would commence, and they were ready to pick up a weapon to start the fight again. Today the sun shone high above New York city as the wind cleared the clouds in the bright blue sky. Elsewhere the Nine Realms, each experienced an unusual day of warmth and sunshine.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my story, it's been six months of hard work and the longest thing I've ever written. With my disability and brain damage the fact I finished this is a huge achievement and I'm so proud of myself. This story evolved from a thing I played in my head to help fall asleep into something dear to my heart, it's truly a fic I needed to write and release into the world. I'd like to thank my beta [Megan](http://wouldyouknowmore.tumblr.com/) again for helping me after my original beta vanished and my artist [Aura](http://happinessfordeeppeople.tumblr.com/) for creating a piece of fanart which represents my fic perfectly. 
> 
> If you want to contact me outside AO3 my Thorki tumblr is [Mother-of-Mischief](https://mother-of-mischief.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Sincerely with all my love Hawkgay


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